The Warmth Of A Women's Flesh
by Rocks-my-socks
Summary: AU. At times you could be mistaken for thinking that Hector and Helen hated each other, but once they were past the argument, the making up came. And then there was at those moment no denying their love for each other. BarbossaOC
1. Curiosity

Disclaimer: Only Helen is mine.

AN: After seeing AWE's I have the POTC bug and had to write some thing. I hope you like this.

Set ten years before Curse of the Black Pearl

_**The Warmth of a Woman's Flesh**_

_**Chapter 1: Curiosity**_

Helen stood on the beach as she watched the beautiful Caribbean sun set illuminate the whole sky. It was nights like these when she knew she was blessed to live in such a place.

When she had first moved to the Caribbean from London, she had hated it. But over time she had indeed learned to love it. More so now that she had learnt of another kind of love.

The love a woman had for a man and vice versa.

Turning to see her love come towards her she had a smile on her face.

"You Hector, are late." She said to him.

A smirk appeared on his face. She was the only one who addressed him by his first name now days. And that made her stand out to him. She was in so many ways to him unique.

The mere feelings she had for him were unique too.

"I am so sorry. I was getting some rum." He said his husky voice laced with charm and wit.

"Well that's ok then." She said as he showed her the bottles he had got, one for each of them.

Sitting down on the white sandy she looked out over the sea. She thought it looked incredible.

It was she thought that her biggest feared looked so appealing at times.

Hector sat by her side and looked at her. Most women were odd, he would admit that but his Helen was beyond odd. He would never understand her fear of the sea. For him sailing was as natural as breathing or eating. But for Helen it was a terrifying thought.

He remembered how when she had revealed that she was scared of the sea to him, he had laughed at her. He wished he had not. She didn't seem to open to him as freely as she had once before now. Not any more…

Wrapping his arm round her, he eased her head on to his shoulder, wanting to hold her close. To him that really was the life: rum in one hand and his girl in the other.

She sighed deeply was they relaxed.

"Don't go tomorrow, stay in Tortuga just for a little longer. Stay with me." She said to him passionately. He shook his head.

"The captain says we have to be off and I am his first mate. I have to go Helen." He said to her seriously.

He looked down on her face and looked at her.

By most she was not considered beautiful but to him she was perfect.

She was a short women, just over five foot, and was slim. Her cheeks had roses in, and her chocolate brown eyes were really rather dull. They did not sparkle, except when she saw him. Her hair was brown and shoulder length.

The dresses she wore were stained from her work as a bar maid, and she relied on Hector to bring her news clothes when he could afford the, bringing them as gifts when he returned from sea to her. It worried her some times how much she did rely on him.

They had been together on and off for the past two years.

She was a spirited young woman, still only twenty two and did not give in him easily.

Maybe that was why he returned to her. Because she was a bit alike a challenge to him. But he never tired of her and her teasing ways, as well as her unpredictable mood swings.

At times you could be mistaken for thinking that Hector and Helen hated each other, but once they were past the argument, the making up came. And then there was at those moment no denying there love for each other.

"And what of me?" she said.

"You know Helen. You are to wait for me if you will lady. Unless you can come aboard. If you would come with me…"

"You know I will never do that," she said to him.

"Not even if it meant we could be together? Not just once in a blue moon but for always?" he asked her.

"No." she said to him quietly, feeling angry with herself. She felt like she was letting him down. She didn't want to do that.

"Why are you so scared? What about the sea frightens you?" Maybe if he could cure her of her fears…

"The fact you can never predict what it is going to do next. The fact you can't tame it. The fact it has no master. The sea bows to no one." she said to him. He let out brief laugh. "That's funny," he commented.

Feeling rather offended for a single moment she sat up and looked at him. "Where prey tell is the humour in that, _my love_?"

"They are the three qualities I would list if someone asked me why I feel for you." He told her with the greatest sincerity.

"Well. I guess I can forgive you then." She said to him laying herself back down in to his arms relaxing once again.

Gently she kissed his cheek, working her way round coyly to his mouth.

"Then the least you can do is stay with me tonight." She said to him. There had been a time when she had been young when she had decided she only wanted to consummate her relationship when they were wed but with the sort of society she live dink, and with little hopes of Hector asking her to be Mrs Barbossa she had soon given in to his charms and let him have his way with her.

"Very well." He said to him smiling.

"Good." She said before putting her head back on to his chest and shutting her eyes. Even if she did have to wait at the times months in between visits from him they were always worth it.

"Helen, can I ask you some thing?" he said.

"You just did."

"Why? There must be some thing else. I mean yer had to sail over here to get to Tortuga in the first place?" said Hector. "You have sailed before. So what's changed?" he asked.

"I don't know. I don't think I have the courage I did when I sailed here all those years ago. You know I didn't enjoy it. I was as sick as a dog most of the time I was at sea. No. I love land. It is safe and reliable." She said.

"Like me?" he questioned.

"Hardly." She said to him as she started laughing.

"So how would yer describe me?"

"Easily. I can do it in one word; pirate." She said as she tried to put an end to the conversation by kissing him again.

"And you have feelings for this pirate?" he asked.

"Aye, Captain."

"I am no captain." He sighed.

"You're mine."

His eyes at that moment betrayed her. Being there with him at the sun set, she couldn't help but let him know completely how she felt. Pride for a single moment no longer mattered to her.

"I love you." She said to him gently.

"And I you my sweet." Said Hector.

Putting the half drunk bottle of rum to the side, he wrapped both her arms round her, and kissed her with the deep passion he felt for her. Thoughts of the next day went out of her head and she let her herself get lost with in his heart which she knew only she could get in to. Tomorrow would wait, Jack would wait. The world would just have to wait.

-

Helen woke the next day with an instant feeling of dread in her stomach. Hector had got up already; she could hear him in the living room. He was going to sea today.

Dressing quickly, she put her hair up in a scruffy bun before going out to see him.

He had a nervous smile on his lips as she came towards him.

Before in the past when he had gone to leave her she had reacted in many different ways to convince him to stay with her. It had been worse when she had simply broke down and begun to cry for him. That morning though she has accepted the fact he was going quietly and she sighed as she kissed him good morning.

"Do you have time for breakfast before you go?" she asked.

"Is that an offer?" he questioned.

"Would I have said it if it wasn't?" she asked playfully going over to the stove to put some hot water on to boil.

"Eggs and sausage ok?" she asked and he nodded. That would be nice, he thought to himself.

She was disappointed how quickly it cooked. It seemed a shorter time than usual, and the quicker breakfast was over, the quicker he left.

Slowly they ate together, Helen more prodding at her food, more nervous about their up coming good bye than she was hungry.

It wasn't long till the two of them were going down to the port hand in hand, and then they were at the Black Pearl.

Helen felt her heart sink. She didn't want him to leave her. She always had such fun when they were together. He made her smile. He made her laugh. He made her want to be better. For him.

Turning to face each other for the last time of the visit they got lost in each others eyes. Helen wished she could turn back time to the night before. It had been so perfect. The perfect way to say good bye.

"Don't be long," she whispered so only he could hear. "And come home to me soon."

"I will darling. I will."

Then he was gone.

She didn't know why she stood there watching the Black Pearl till it was out of the dock, till she could not see it at all. It only added to her hurt.

But it felt like she couldn't go till he had completely gone. If she could still see the ship then there was a chance he might come back. But when it was gone she knew he wouldn't.

How often did she go through the process. Her life seemed to be one big circle. But she loved him so much she couldn't break away.

And so she went home she got in to her work clothes, and went up to the bar to do her shift, where she spent the night in a trance thinking of all the good times with Hector and the bad as well.

-

Hector put the rum bottle to his lips and downed it.

He was sitting on the upper deck of the Pearl also thinking of the night before when he had been inn Helens arms. He was thinking if there good and bad times and he just like her was wondering how long they were going to go on like this. They were in a far from perfect romance.

After all she was a young women and she had her needs. They did not include waiting half her life for him to be ready to love her.

But she was not his true love. His true love was the sea. He was a pirate. The sea was quite simply where he belonged, and he would never leave it for a women.

Not even his Helen. So he promised himself that night that he was going to enjoy every moment he got with Helen. He would kiss her when she asked him to kiss her. He would savour every touch of her cool flesh, and he would embed every good memory they made in to his heart. But never would he give himself to her. There was some things that were just not possible. He being happy on land forever in her arms he didn't think was possible.

Maybe it was but he wasn't sure he was willing to find out. Some times though when he was lonely thought. There were so many what if's when it came to them...

If only she wasn't scared of the water then there would be no trouble for them. He liked the idea of the two of them being together at sea. One day he could get his own ship and it'd be run by Captain Barbossa and his wife and first mate, Helen Barbossa.

As he saw Jack coming over to him he shook the thoughts of her out of his head or tried to. Some times he felt as if she plagued him, whether he was with him or not.

"I trust you were with yer bonny lass last night?!" his captain said to him.

"I was." He said to him.

"And you have still not convinced her to come abroad our ship here mate?" he asked.

"No."

"Then maybe you need to find yourself a new girl then mate… think about it. Me and Ana Maria…. because she is not so 'scared' as your lass put it we can be together all the time… every night… savvy?"

"I understand yer sir, but no." he said to him.

One day they were going to be over, him and his Helen. But as long as he could keep her he would. He remembered before he had met her. Whores they were ten a penny.

But they didn't give him the same feeling that Helen did. Didn't make him feel as good.

And Helen. Well she was some one he could care for in return. And some one who truly loved him. It was a stupid thing to crave, he thought to himself…Love.

But there was a lot to be said for the love of a good woman, for the touch of her warm flesh.

And well if he was honest it was some one for him to love. He did. Truly he loved her.

"Well maybe yer come to yer senses." Said Jack to him Ana came on to the deck. She had dark seductive eyes that were always so bright.

He hoped so, thought Hector to himself.

"Jack!" she said to him. "I need a bit of help with some thing, below deck. Could you come and help me."

"And what would you need me for, do tell deariee." He said to her as he got up and walked over to her.

"I do not think that poor Barbossa should have to listen to It." she said to him smirking. "Come down stairs." she said to him putting her arms up and wrapping them about his neck, and his went round her waist. There faces were inches away from touching.

"Barbossa, mind the ship."

"Aye captain."

Taking another swig of rum he sat back as night drew close about the Pearl and then he decided just to sit there and wait for morning to come.

-

Helen was getting nervous. Over four weeks had passed since she had last had a course. She and Hector had been together a week after her last one.

Could she be with child?

Part of her hoped so. Part of her wanted to be having his child so desperately. After being with him for two years. Two years of such love between them. Could this be just what they needed?

Maybe if he had a baby then he would stay to be with them both. That was the fantasy for her.

However there was the other side of her that was so against her having this child, if she was indeed having one.

When he was there she did not wish to share her lover. When h was there he wanted him to be focused on her.

If they had a child then they were going to… well it was going to change them for ever. She had never wanted a thing between them to change.

But then again nothing in the world was for ever. Not even love…

If she had his baby then maybe the loneliness would stay away. She would have some one to tend for. And she would always have a part of him with her.

Maybe then her stupid little house would become a real home. Some where Hector might consider living, maybe?

She didn't know why she tried to convince her self he was going to stay with her one day. He was a pirate. He always had been. She knew she wasn't going to change that. She wasn't so naive.

How many other stupid little sluts were there out on the seas waiting for him to return to them she wondered. He was a pirate; she couldn't be the only one she thought to herself angrily (even though in her heart or hearts she knew she was).

She wished he would betray her some days. It'd make leaving him easier, or it would if that was what she wanted to do.

The fact was she didn't know what she wanted, or who. The only thing she did know was she wanted to be loved. By Hector Barbossa if possible. She wanted them to be for keeps.

And if she had a child then she would be.

Five weeks passed. She didn't bleed. She_ was _with child.

It was one day with in that fifth week since she had first starting suspecting she was having a baby, that the Black Pearl at long last returned to the port of Tortuga and as Hector got off the boat he was greeted by her running down the dock towards him. She threw herself in to his arms and kissed him.

"Well of I had this welcome all the time maybe I would come back more often." He said to her between kisses. The other crew mates were now wolf whistling towards them as he picked her up and carried her off the dock.

"I think I have some really huge news for you." She said to him. "In fact I know I do."

"Well come on lets go back to the house and you can tell me," he suggested, grabbing her hand.

"No I want every thing to be perfect when I tell you. I am going to get some dinner on and then you can come after you have had a drink with the others." She said to him, her eyes dancing about his face with excitement.

Now he was here she could really imagine being a mum and in that moment it was what she wanted, more than any thing else in the world.

"Just the one or two though, I don't want you getting drunk." She said to him. He had to remember every moment of the up coming night.

"Ok then." He kissed her and she nodded, turned round and run off to prepare herself.

He shrugged, and along with the rest of the crew went to the tavern.

-

Jack Sparrow was curious.

He had met Helen before that moment when she had run down to see his first mate, but what did she want to say to him that night, Jack wondered.

Some thing in Jack had stirred. He wasn't even sure what it was. But he wanted to know what was going on.

So after Barbossa had had his two drinks that his lover had permitted him, he went to the bar and go it him a third.

"Go on mate, that was a hard voyage ye' deserve it!" he said to him.

It wasn't long the crew saw till the first mate of the black Pearl was too drunk to go any where.

"Take Barbossa back to then pearl Gibbs." He said to his friend. "I think one of us should go down to Miss Helen and tell her what has happened." He said with a smirk that Gibbs understood.

Jack walked down to the house on the edge of the town where Helen lived.

The door was open when he got there, and he walked straight in.

"Hector, sit down!" he heard Helens happy voice say to him. "I thought you would have been back a bit sooner but no matter now. I have such a wonderful surprise for you." She said to who she thought was Hector.

Jack watched as the happy young woman came through to where he was standing. She had dolled her self up for his first mate. She had a scarlet dress on and her hair had been put up in a bun this time neatly.

"Captain." She said confused as she saw her lovers superior and not her lover himself. "Is every thing ok? Where's Hector?" she asked.

"He won't be coming!" Jack told her.

"What." Her disappointment and disbelief came out in that practically silence word. Her face fell.

"He has had as little to much liquor for his own good, and now can not come down here to see you."

"Well that's ok," she sighed. "He can come tomorrow?" she said already planning to give him hell for standing her up. .

"Regrettably not. Said pirate is only in port for night savvy? We have to be moving on tomorrow." He nodded.

Not caring that she had a guest Helen turned her back on Jack went through to the kitchen and begun to weep. How on earth could he do this to her? On the night she was going to tell him he was going to be a father!

Every time he made her cry she said it was for the last time. But it never was.

It was the in the depth of her despair she felt a hand in her shoulder. She turned to see the face of Jack. He was there for her.

Since he had entered she had not looked at him properly till then, her thoughts were o preoccupied with her lover.

"I am sorry captain." She said to him, embarrassed by her foolish tears.

"No, its ok," he said to her gently.

"I told him not to get drunk. He knew what tonight meant to me." She said to him.

"Why don't we go for a walk?" Jack suggested.

"Yes," nodded Helen that did sound like a good idea.

Jack was determined to find out more about the lass that night. He just didn't understand her. How could any one fear the sea? His curiosity drove his actions that night.

Going down to the beach together it was harder for Helen than she had thought it would be as she was remembering that night when she had been there with Hector. That was the night they had conceived their child.

Her hand rested lightly on her stomach.

She had hope for them still. So that night hadn't worked out the way she had planned it. There were going to be others.

"You feel better?" he asked.

She nodded. She loved this beach and the way the wind run through her hair at night. The breeze that surrounded her was so cool.

"I do." She said to him.

"Then come, sit with me a while Miss Helen." He said to her.

"If I must sir." She said as she sat at his side.

"You know," he said to her. "If you really want to see me first mate, you can come aboard the Pearl tomorrow."

"no." she said to him quickly. "I have a job to go to. Work here to do. But thank you for the offer." She said to him.

"And there is no other reason you will not come." He asked making his motive obvious.

"I see you have been talking to my love!" She said to him.

"Yes. He misses you when he is away," Jack told her.

"As I miss him." She told Jack. "I just can't go there Jack, not to sea." She said to him.

"Why ever not?" he asked.

"My father. He drowned at sea." She said to him. It was odd she thought to herself. She had never told Hector that and yet when she had been talking to Jack it had just come out.

"And you think if you go that's what will happen to you." He asked.

"I don't know what I think. I hate the thought Hector being out there. But it is like it is in his blood. I don't want to share my Fathers fate. If Hector does then it is his choice I am not going to guilt him in to staying with me. I want no mans pity." She said to him.

"I don't think any would dare to offer it." he said.

As they lay on the beach Jack begun to see just a little bit of the reason that Hector had gone for her. She really was a little fire cracker, he thought to himself.

There was a new understanding between the two of them.

Jack would never understand what he did next or why he did it. He swept down and grazed his lips against hers.

"Jack… what are you doing?" she whispered.

"Kissing you Helen…."


	2. Lies and Secrets

_**Chapter 2: Lies and Secrets**_

Hector awoke to a sinking feeling in his stomach and his head was banging. He had drunk far too much the night before.

There was some thing he should have done though… he thought to himself… some thing he had forgotten… lord he hungry… what had he forgotten?

DINNER!

Helen had been cooking for him. She had had news. It was meant to be special, he thought too himself as her words came back to him.

In other words she was going to kill him.

Getting up and dressed quickly in his cabin he sighed. He wondered if she would tell him now. Probably not knowing her.

Getting up on board he sighed again.

Blacks clouds filled the sky … it was not going to be a good day.

-

Helen felt disgusted with her self. No matter how long Hector had been gone before she had n ever betrayed him.

Now when he had been on the island she had...And she had done it with his superior. His captain.

She went in to the kitchen leaving Jack on the bed and the tears of frustration begun in her eyes.

She was so stupid at times and she hated her self for it, she truly did. She'd never forgive herself.

_Hector why didn't you come?_ If he had only come then it would never have happened.

And why had she been so obsessed that every thing had to be just right when she told him he was going to be a father. No matter when he had got the news he probably would have been horrified, she said to herself.

"Come on darling?" she heard a voice behind her. "Surely I wasn't that bad!" Jack said to her.

"I feel repulsed." She said to him emotionally.

"Well don't hold back will ye love?" he said to her. "Any chance of a brew." He asked.

"Just go." She ordered him. "This is my house not your ship, you have to do as I say." She started wilfully.

"As you wish madam but can I just ask one thing?" he said to her. "And then I swear I will go!"

"What?" she said to him shortly.

"What is this huge news you had to tell your beloved Hector last night?" he asked mockingly she felt.

"That's right, he is my beloved. And why you think I would tell you any thing about us I don't know," she said to him viscously.

"Because you slept with me last night."

It was a sharp cruel reminded. Jack she knew was not a bad man. And last night… well it had taken two to tango.

But every thing was confusing in that moment. And much the way she had unexpected responded to his kiss last night she blurted her news out, when she hadn't even meant too.

"I am with child." She said to him.

Jack smirked. Well there was a piece of leverage he wasn't expecting.

"Well good day my lady." He said to her, picking his hat off the kitchen table befor4e walking out of the kitchen to the living area where the door was. She didn't watch him go.

Running a hand through her hair she considered her next move. Did she tell Hector what she had done? There really was a part of that would feel better for it.

That part of her was her heart. If she did though she may lose him forever, and that thought hurt her more than anything else in the world ever could.

Her entire body had begun shaking with anger towards herself. She had been such a fool. He had been all she had had these past few years. The only one for her…Hector was still the only one for her.

"God forgive me." She said out loud, lord knows she needed forgiveness.

The next thing on her agenda was to have a wash. She had to clean herself of Jack.

The previous night had certainly been an experience. One she wasn't sure she wanted again, in fact one she knew she didn't.

In no way was Hector what you would call a gentle lover, but with that loving he had skill. He knew a thing or two about serving women. It only stood to reason. He had had many before they had met.

Jack…he had been so clumsy. The rum sodden pirate had hardly pleasured her. Ever since she had met him she had found him lacking in charm and wit whilst Hector had ever oozed it.

She didn't know why she hadn't suspected they would be so different in the bedroom too. Maybe it was because Hector had been all she had ever known. She had given him some thing she could never take back when she had given up her virginity to him. He was the first. She hoped he was her last.

About thirty seconds after she had heard Jack shut the door behind himself she heard it open again.

"Oh go away!" she yelled at the door. She didn't want to see any one.

"No." the response was blunt, and spoken by a hurt, angry voice.

A voice she knew only too well.

"Hector." She said as she went out to him. She was about to launch in to the big 'I am' speech when he got there first.

"Why Helen?" he asked his eyes blazing with a dangerous hate for ….her?

It was then that the truth daunted on her. He must have seen Jack coming out the house. In other words, he knew every thing. He knew she had been unfaithful.

"Oh god." she said to him. "Hector…."

"Come on Helen. I am waiting!" he said to her quite calmly.

Her tears ducks welled up again as she sat down.

"Why didn't you come?" she asked him as her voice cracked with emotion.

"I think you are going to find I asked a question first!" he said to her. "Yer should answer it….ANSWER!" he boomed at her.

The fun loving gentle Hector of the past was gone as she looked at him in that moment. Nothing of the man she had known since they had met.

"Please just calm down we can talk about this. It meant nothing." she said to him.

"What meant nothing?" he asked her. He had to hear her say it.

"What do you mean what meant nothing. You saw Jack. You know what we did last night, your no fool my love – you know I've betrayed you."

"Yes. Yes you have Helen. And you know what? I don't think I really care if I ever see you again now." He told her. His face lit up with pleasure as hers crumbled. To know he had hurt her as much as she had hurt him. There was just one big difference between the two of them. That was her could hide his emotions. "I am no longer your love." He said to her.

She was utterly destroyed by now. He knew in the depth of his hearts that hers was broken just as much as his was. Maybe it had been rum induced. Maybe not, he didn't know. But no longer did he care to find out.

When they had got together, he had always said when the time came to let his little Helen he would. And now the time had come.

"Good bye ter yer…. Whore." He said unable to resist one last snipe at her.

"I am not a whore," he heard defiant cry from behind her as he went to leave her home. "All I have ever done is love you Hector. I still love you…"

He turned on his heal to steal one last glance of her.

She sat on the floor tears trickling from her eyes, her hair scraggy as it hung down by her shoulders. He didn't think she had ever been so beautiful.

"Good bye ter yer…Helen." He said.

He turned and walked out. Again she called for him. But this time he didn't go back. He wouldn't go back.

But she decided in that moment not to let go so easily. They had some thing good. He wasn't just her lover. He had always since the day they had meant, been her very best fried. She was going to be damned if she didn't fight for him, for them. For their love. They had been together through to much for her to let go so easily.

Dressing her self in a hurry she was desperate to get to the dock. She had to win him back. He was the one good thing in her life.

She refused to let him go.

Running as fast as she could when she was ready she easily located the Pearl where she had found it the day before.

Had it really just been yesterday when he had took her in to his arms, kissed her and told her how good it was to see her? Yesterday when he had loved her so much…

"Hector!" she called out for him.

He had been just about to board the ship with the other ship mates. She didn't understand how and why he could get on there with Sparrow when he was punishing her so much but she didn't really care either. All she knew was she had to get him back. She belonged with him, and he with her.

"Please don't leave me." She said to him, as he strode towards her.

"Why have you come?" he spat angrily at her.

"Because what ever last night was, what ever went on it isn't worth throwing every thing we have together away. Hector he means nothing to me, I know you know that. I love you. You're everything to me." She said to him.

"No." he said to her. "It is over Helen. " he said and turned to go back on to the ship but she wasn't given up on him with out a fight.

"What do you want me to do Hector. Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg for you, to stay to forgive me? I will." She said and she did.

There he stood, her before him, her hands clutching each other to stop them shaking, desperate for him to love her once more. Desperate for his mercy.

But there was no chance she thought to herself. He would show her no compassion and she knew it. She had betrayed him.

"Look at yourself. Yer an embarrassment Helen." He said to her.

"Please, won't you just hear my news for you?" she begged him desperately, as she tried to grab him.

"I don't care Helen. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY I DON'T CARE ANY MORE?"

It was then that he did the one thing she thought he never would, or him for that matter. Not to her. Not to his Helen.

With one swift blow with his hand, he knocked her down so she was just like she had been back at the house. Crumpled… defeated by him. After so many arguments, so many battles he smiled.

He had won he war.

"I never want to see your face, or hear your voice again." He said to her seriously. Then he turned and went aboard. He had plans for the captain that voyage. He had to see them through. He had punished Helen. She had been right in one thing. It was time he got his own back on Jack too.

Why hadn't he just been able to leave him and Helen be? They had been happy together.

Bootstrap Bill Turner had been watching all of this and he of all the crew members felt a strange compassion for the woman.

She wasn't that old. Probably hadn't seen that much of the world. And now the man she had ever loved had left her totally humiliated.

His posting was on the upper deck that day and as much as he wanted to go and help he could not. They had to be off in a while. Every one had to be ready to go at the captains say so.

The poor thing lay on the wooden dock, shell shocked people walking about her, no one bothering to pick her up. It was as if to so many she wasn't there.

She just lay there like a widow who had been told her husband had been claimed by Davy Jones and he would never see her again. Never caress her again.

"Poor child." He muttered to Gibbs as they looked at her.

"Stupid girl." He commented.

She had had it all and then she had thrown it away.

"I know. But can't help but pity her." Bill said.

"No. Me neither."

Helen lay there till the Pearl was gone. Never before had she heard nothing but such a defending silence. There were so many thoughts in her head.

The thought Hector had hit her. The thought he was gone. The thought he no longer loved her at all.

"But I am having our baby." She whispered to the wind. Then she commenced sobbing her heart out.

-

"Yer see that bit of land over there 'captain'?"

Barbossa was going to enjoy this. He had planned it. He had informed the crew what was going to happen. And now he was carrying through with the mutiny. He didn't care that it was wrong. All he knew was there was only one thing that he could take from Jack that would hurt him as much as it had hurt him when the captain had taken Helen. And that was his ship.

"Aye I do," said Jack trying to keep his happy go lucky façade.

"How would yer like ter see it a bit closer, if yer understand what I am saying?" Said Barbossa to him and Jack begun the laughing.

Lulling him in to a false sense of security Barbossa begun laughing to and the crew followed his lead.

That unnerved Jack. Had they really taken him as their new captain?

"I don't think I do." He said to him.

"Then why don't explain it ter yer a bit clearer." He suggested. "Walk the plank."

It was then that all the crew members drew there swords. He was going to have to go to save his life it seemed. He had no choice.

"The deepest circle of hell is reserved for mutineers and betrayers gentleman." Jack reminded them.

"Then I guess we are all going ter see yer there." said Barbossa.

"Oh Barbossa so this is about the girl." Smirked Jack.

"No. this is just politics. This is nothing personal." He lied. "Just me and gents don't feel your been doing yer job right properly, ent they right!" he said to them and there was a cheer from them all.

All except one.

Bootstrap.

"This is wrong." He muttered to the crew men beside him, but they did not see it this way.

"Since I am such a good captain, or I will be." Said Barbossa to Jack "I am going to leave yer with one pistol." He said to him. "I'll be honouring the code." He said to him as he gave him a single shot.

"Good luck ter yer Sparrow. Yer'll be needing it." he told him. "Now walk the plank."

"One minute, here, hold up here Barbossa. What if I knew some thing? Some thing yer might be interested in.!" he said to him.

"Like what?"£

"Like what yer surprise from Helen would have been," he said trying to save his own skin.

"I no longer care. Not get off my ship." He said as he walked angrily towards him taking up the spot where Jack had been standing and making him go to the plank. By this time tomorrow captain Jack Sparrow would be forgotten. He would hopefully be dead.

Bill tried to get to his captain in that moment. But there was no way to save Jack; the game was up fir the pirate Lord.

Barbossa would pay for this, he thought to himself. Just the way he would pay for humiliating that girl.

-

Over time Helen had had to come to terms that Hector was never going to be coming back to her.

As the days passed, no longer did she go to the dock to look for him. No longer did she keep hope in her soul. It was over.

She had been so besotted by him and it took her as long time to get over him. He had been one of the only people she had ever let in to her heart. And he had abused it. But she guessed that worked both ways when she had slept with his best friend. She had abused him and his trust just as badly as he had her.

After she had got up of that dock and she had got home and she had cried till there was no tears left, she had looked to the future.

The future with her baby.

Even if she did on longer have its father then she was going to have her baby. She didn't want to be alone. If she had their bay, Hector would always be close to her.

Helen had a few friends, and one extra special one called Emily. She proved herself very loyal to Helen over the pregnancy.

Poor Emily had to endure so much from Helen from her dangerous moods to her moments of great despair.

But more than any thing she saw Helen grew from a girl to a woman. Her hand was for ever caressing her stomach, which was rather large by the seventh month of her pregnancy.

"Oh I can not wait till the baby comes," said Helen one day.

"No, neither can I, it'll be beautiful" agreed Emily.

"I hope for a boy." She admitted to her best friend. "I hope for him to be every inch his father's son. For him to be honourable." She said.

"I don't think his father is that honourable. If he was then he would be here with you, his child's mother helping her through her pregnancy." She said as they sat down for a cup if tea.

"I don't think I blame him. None of this is Hectors fault. He is a good man. He doesn't even no about the baby. I just was never good enough for him, I see that now." she said to her.

"He is a pirate my friend. Forgive me for thinking it is the other way round." She said.

"No I will not." Said Helen furiously. "None of this was his fault."

"Helen he hit you."

"With good reason. I will hear no words against Hector. The way when he left was a bad one. He may yet return."

But Emily could tell by the sadness in her friends eyes she did not believe he was going to be returning to see her or the child she was about to have ever again. Helen was utterly alone. But she soon wouldn't be.

-

When the child come Helen was thrilled to realise it was not just one child she was going to have. It was two.

She had twins. She had a boy and a girl.

They were christened by their mother Hector and Jane, and she prayed they would have more luck in life and love than she had; though mostly it had been her own foolish mistakes that had lead her down such a path.

If only she had not kissed Jack back. Then so much could have been different. But she had and she had no time to dwell on it now. She had children to raise.

Often she wondered what their father would have made of them. Would he want his son to be a pirate? Of course hew would.

And would he want his daughter to be his little girl who saw him as a hero? Again, of course he would.

There was a rare loving side, not many people saw to Hector. She was sure if only he could see them, the children of Hector Barbossa would worm there way in to his affections and his heart.

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	3. Memories

_**Chapter 3: Memories**_

Sometimes he wondered how she was now days. Five long years had passed since Hector had left Helen, as well as unknowingly his son (and heir) as well as his daughter.

Part of him wished he had given her a chance to explain herself when he had got there on that fateful morning. Had every thing been as it had seemed? If had there been he didn't know – a mistake. Some days he had even prayed what had gone on there that night had been rape, that Helen had been an innocent in Sparrow's clutches. That she hadn't wanted him.

Then he felt sick with himself for wanting to condemn the one he had loved to such cruelty. Although if she had slept with Sparrow willing, was rape any less than she deserved, sometimes he wondered.

It didn't take him long to realize after he had left her…. He had already thought of her, not as he had said on their last meeting a whore, but his wife.

His beloved.

The only comfort he had now was the sea, and he smiled with the thought that had and always would be enough for him. Until he got old, and unable to sail.

_Who will you run to then, Barbossa?_ The wind seemed to whisper to him. _Who will nurse you when you are sick? _

Barbossa smirked at the thought of him needing nursing…it brought back a memory some times he would rather forget.

_A young Helen walked through to the bedroom, tonics in her hand, and worry in her eyes. _

_She was no nurse, but she had been told how to try and ease Hector's pain, so she would try to help him none the less. _

_He had been in a battle at sea and even though the ship had come off worse than all the pirates put together, there were a great number of them injured and now stranded at Tortuga. That suited Helen down to the ground. It meant he was going to be close for quite some time and in her care._

_Hector was clearly unfit to sail for now and so were many of the others. Only a few had come out unscathed. They had begun repairs on the Pearl. _

_There he lay in her bed, his eyes shut with fatigue, his entire body relaxed knowing just where he was and whom he was with. He was with Helen, she was close and he felt glad, for knowing his love was with him, though he did wish she didn't have to dress the ugly wound on his leg. _

"_If I do not do it, then some other women has too," she had said to him the night he had arrived, when he had foolishly trued to argue her trying nurse him back to health. "I am your women. I don't want another doing my duty." She had smiled. _

_With the gentlest of touches she undid the material that had bound his leg and begun bathing in, her eyes ever going too his face checking there was always an expression of relaxation and never of pain. _

_Once she had bathed it in a clear medicine, she took up the one which contained a green concoction. It had a evil smell, and the women she had brought it from had warned it may sting a little when it was applied to the wound. _

"_This one may hurt a little my love," she said to him giving him warning and he nodded but if it did hurt him then he did not show it to her, remaining in her eyes the most brave of all the pirates. _

_Once she had rebound his leg, though it was not wonderfully done (for she was no medic) she went up to the bed and lay down on her side of it._

_His eyes opened, and a small smile crept on to his lips at the sight of her loving, loyal face. "Thank you my Helen," he said to her as he in his pain still moved his arm to cup her cheek wanting to feel her. "You are a good nurse."_

"_I don't know about that." She said as she observed his face. He had a huge gash on it, and looked sorer than his leg had been. But there was nothing she could do for it but bath it in water and keep it clean. _

"_I do." He said to her. _

_She stifled a embarrassed laugh and kept herself propped up by her arms so she was looking at his face. _

_He was rather handsome at times she thought to herself. Due to the fact he was in the sun so much, his face was bronzed, and his hair was a golden brown colour as was his beard. Was it any wondered she had fallen in love with him?_

_And his eyes…they were wicked, so intense and dark, as if they had been given him by the devil himself. And they entranced her. Made her want to see what went on behind them. Made her want to know more about him…more about his love. _

"_You've wicked eyes, you know," she told him and he nodded as he took one of her hands in his, brought it to his month and kissed it, savouring every touch of her warm flesh. _

"_Hector…" she said to him. _

"_Yes?"_

"_Do you think it would put you in much pain if I were to cuddle you?" she asked. _

_His eyes became masked with affection for the twenty year old. They had only being 'together' for six months and during them he had found her ever so innocent. Some times angry, and some times troubled, but always innocent. _

"_No Helen, I think that would help heal me," he said to her as he open up one arm and allowed her to put her head on his chest. The sound of his beating heart soothed her, and the love he could feel from her, did indeed help his recovery. _

Hector let the wind blow through his hair. It was no longer golden brown but a grey. It had been fading ever since they had taken the Aztec gold.

He hated this thing he now was. Nor dead, nor alive. He could feel nothing. He could taste nothing, and it embittered him further. Some days he longed for Helens love… others for her death. Some times he did not think of her at all, but when he did, it was never with indifference.

To himself he could not deny the fact. Whatever the reason, he still felt a passion for Helen, and always would.

-

The five of them sat on the beach. Helen, Emily, Emily's own six month old child, and the now four going on five twins.

Jane and Hector, to their mother, between them had every good point of their father and some of his worse traits too.

Jane had grown in to a petite form, with golden brown hair and her father's sharp intense eyes. She could run, making mischief all day, or would if her mother allowed her too, and when Emily took her in for a swim she loved the sea. She had no care for her mother's fear of it, which she had not picked up on; her love for it was so strong. She was devious to, and the brains of any plan her and her brother came up with to cause havoc even at such a young age.

Hector was already a tall boy who would no doubt stand at tall as his father when he was older. He had his mothers brown locks and eyes, though his really did gleam with excitement for life. He had inherited just as his sister had there papas love for the sea, though he preferred to sail then to be swimming in it as his sister did. Emily's husband, Andrew, had a small dingy boat and when he went out to sea he often took Hector, for the boy had no father to take him.

As she watched the two of them play together she smiled. Some times the twins fought like cat and dog. They were both as stubborn as there parents and they had a great sense of pride already, just as she and their father had. They would be honourable, Helen was determined of that.

She hoped they didn't fight with their lover like she had fought with Hector when they grew up to have lovers (though that was a long way off). They were still only babies to there mother.

She smirked as she remembered one of the more memorable fights she had had with their father.

"_You were looking at her Hector, don't tell me you were not because I know you were, I saw you were!" a furious Helen raged as they got back to her house. _

"_Nay, I was not my little sweetheart." He said in a patronizing tone, "How could I look at any one else when I had you there in the tavern on my arm, the most beautiful girl in the room."_

_Hector smirked. He loved it when he got her all fired up. He thought it was rather funny, and definitely very passionate. The rows drove his need and want of her. _

_Just the way she thought it was funny at times to tease him about what she got up to when he was away. And that she knew put a real fire in to his soul. _

_They both had humongous jealous streaks when it came to one another and the thought if any one else touching the other both horrified and broke them emotionally. Hector would rather see Helen dead he some times thought than in the arms of another man, another lover._

"_Stop lying!" she said as she picked up glass from the table where she had left it before they had gone out and throw at him. _

_Helen smirked as she sae for her it was quite a good shot, and just missed his ear._

"_That could have hit me!" he said to her._

"_Good because it was meant to!" _

_He began laughing at her anger which only intensified it further. _

"_Why are you laughing at me?" she asked, demanding the answer by the mere anger in her voice. He knew she hated it when he laughed at her._

"_Because I know I can, because I know your mine." He gently said effectively defusing the situation. _

_Why that had come out he didn't really know. All he did know was he had an overwhelming desire to have her lips against his. _

_Walking from his side of the room to hers, he saw the fear in her eyes. The same fear she always had when he was close. That she was one day going to lose him. _

"_I didn't mean to hurt you my dear," he said to her. "Aye maybe make yer a bit jealous. But never hurt you." He told her. _

"_I know," she whispered to him as she let him wrap her arms round her waist. "I didn't even really want that glass to hit you. Well maybe a little bit," She said to him sarcastically. _

"_I know," He said as pushed his warm lips to hers and she responded by kissing him passionately in return. _

_Her hand went to the back of his neck and rested gently. How did he do it to her?__Make her hate one minute and love the next. _

_His lips bore down on her skin savagely, as if he was always trying to get deeper in to her. As if he wanted to become a part of her. Little did he know, he already had. _

Helen sighed. If only things hadn't gone the way they had but the one thing she did know was she could not do was change the past. No one could do that.

As she let the sun beat down on her, she smiled and enjoyed the warmth of it. She was living and breathing and deep down thought herself quite content to be a mother and friend.

Long years had passed since she had been a lover. She had not gone with any one since she had been Jack Sparrow.

Even though she knew it to be foolish, she looked to the horizon for the Pearl. It had not come to Tortuga in years or if it had then she had missed it.

No doubt Jack used a different dock now. She wished he didn't, for she was even beginning to long to see him so he could give her news of Hector, and some days she allowed her self to hope. It was a fool's hope, but hope none the less. She was not so cynical as she had been when she had been younger. She needed the hope to go on now. If she didn't have hope she had nothing.

What really broke her heart though, was the fact at times no longer could she recall Hector's face. It was only at certain times and when she looked at his children she saw it instantly, and in memories it was constant. But some times, she thought of that wild man she used to love and no image came to her head.

"Mama?" she heard her son say to her as he approached.

"Yes my sweet?" she asked as he lazily sat in to her arms, leaning in to her as the sun and warmth filled the little ones with warmth bringing with it tiredness.

"When I am big like Andrew can I go to sea and be a pirate?" he asked.

"If that is what you want," she said to him. If he went to se then there was a chance h may one day find his father, she thought to herself.

"And me too mama?" she heard Jane's voice.

"Yes. You can have a grand ship together." She smiled.

"And I shall be the Captain and Jane the first mate?" asked Hector. That was how it was when they were in the make believe games, in there stories.

"Yes and you shall together be the most feared pirates in the all Caribbean oceans." She said to them laughing.

"Helen," said Emily. "Such talk is not safe." She said to her.

"We live in Tortuga, which is notorious for its pirates, my friend." She said as she cradled her son and smile at her daughter.

"But still. Word is that the East India Trading company are trying to clear the world of those who even only mutter the word pirate." She said to her.

"All that is, is a far off tale." declared Helen, putting her child's hearts at rest who had been worried momentarily. They had no father, they couldn't lose their mother. "These waters have always belonged to pirates and they always will."

Emily was such a good girl though. She had ensured she had been wed before she had slept with and few.

There son was going to be a good sailor she thought. No pirate. And Helen knew she disapproved of the way she brought up her children at times but she couldn't help it. All she was trying to do was raise them in the way she thought there father would have wanted her too.

Helen didn't know how Emily could for ever stick to the rules. If she had lived like that she'd go mad. For sure, she thought to herself, that was Hector's influence on her.

-

Night had come once again and Helen shut the children's curtains.

"Well another day in Tortuga is over my darlings." She said as she turned and walked up in the gaps between the single beds and sat on the edge of Hector's. "Did you have a good time at the beach today?"

"Yes mama!" her son replied and she looked to her daughter.

Jane was deep in thought clearly and looked a little bit down.

"Are you ok?" she asked as she went over and sat on her bed.

"Mama?" said Jane, well more blurted out with a nervous short of tone in her voice.

"Yes."

"Why do me and Hector not have a papa?" she asked.

"You do," said Helen as she lifted hair to her daughter's head and begun gently comforting her by stroking her hair.

"Then where is he?" she asked.

"He is just away at the moment." She said feeling a pang of guilt. She had no idea where he was. If he was even alive any more.

You can not think like that, thought Helen to herself. That sort of thoughts will kill you.

"Andrew never leaves Emily and the baby." she sulked. All she had ever wanted was to know her papa and it had been on her mind so much lately confusing the little one.

"Did I do some thing bad? Is that why papa went away?" she asked.

"No, no my darling, what ever gave you that idea? What happened with papa, none of it was your or his fault. Neither of you must blame him for not being here, or yourselves. Some times you see children, things don't always go to plan no matter how much you want them too and when the moment is gone, you cane never get it back." She said to them. "Your papa loves you both I promise you where ever he is, we are in his thoughts and heart." She said to them. She knew it w s a lie as he didn't even know about them, but she had to say some thing to ease them. He would love them if he was given the chance, if he would give himself the chance. She knew that much.

"Do you think he is ever going to come back to us mama?" Jane asked.

"I don't know, but we can trust to hope, and I do." She said to her daughter. "Don't worry little one. If papa could be here with us, then he would be." She said as she tucked her in.

"Promise?" asked Hector. She knew he must miss his father too. He was a male in a world so girls. The male influence was much needed and was only going to be needed more as he grew in to a man. Andrew was there as much as he could be, but it wasn't enough.

The needed Hector.

"I promise darling. He is a man of honour." she told him.

Kissing them both it wasn't long till Helen was back in the living room and she was worrying, she hadn't really thought of the affect his absents was going to have on the children in a while. She had always known his absence was going to carry some weight in there lives. She had always known there was going to be a time when they were going to ask after him.

But she hadn't expected it to be so soon.

If there was only a way she could get to him, to tell him what a fool she had been for sleeping with Jack, she still loved and missed him desperately. To think it had been five years since he had left her…

But there wasn't. Because the sea separated them. Maybe that was why Hector kept on sailing. Because he damn well knew that she couldn't go on it, she couldn't cope at sea. So if he was there, he would never ever have to face her.

The guilt she had for sleeping with Jack was renewed once more that night. She should have resisted. The thought she had not was going to haunt her for ever.

Then again maybe she should have resisted being with Hector when he had first slept with her too, she pondered, if she had now of this would have happen. But if she was honest that first fateful night had been her doing. She had been desperate for him.

_In a soft blue dress, a nervous Helen walked down to the beach. She had spent hours getting ready for this and now the time had come she was shaking like a leaf. _

_The beach was deserted, all but for one person whom she was going to join. _

_Hector Barbossa. _

_After three months of 'seeing each other' they had decided to take things to the next level. Last time, when he had come to see her, she had said to him she had not been ready to give all of herself to him and when he had gone she had bitterly regretted it. So the night before when he had returned to her she had told him all she had been thinking when he had been gone and how much she had missed him, and what she wanted to do._

_At first, Hector had not been sure it was the right thing; he thought perhaps she was saying it just to keep him close and he said he could wait longer if he had too. He wasn't going to leave her._

_But she had said no. She wanted it to be that night. _

_A warm evening had come to Tortuga and as she walked up to him, she saw he had got every thing ready. He had brought rum to give her courage and he had set out a blanket. They were in a small well hidden corner of the beach. No one could see them. They weren't going to be disturbed. _

_As she reached him though she simply wanted him so much that for the first time she said no hello, she just kissed him… deeper and deeper. _

"_Helen," he muttered, more moaned as he spun round so she faced outwards towards the shore, her body covered by the shield of the stone cove that hid them from any ones views_

"_Yes…" she said to him. _

"_I love you…" that had been the first time he had ever said those words to her. _

_Her eyes were dancing with joy in that moment._

"_Do I even have to say it back for you to know the way I feel for you my darling?" she had said to him. _

"_No, I know Helen, I know." _

_And they proceeded to take one another's clothes off and to make love under the stars till the early hours of the morning. _

_Then when the deed was done, they lay in each others arms, complete smitten and silent. He drunk the rum, but she just lay there as he held her close. She didn't want to forget a second of that night, and as she looked at him she run her index finger about his face. _

"_What are you doing?" _

"_Burning you and tonight in to my mind, so I never forget… tonight, these last few months… any of it." she said to him. _

"_You won't have to remember. I am always going to be here to remind you." He said swept up in the magic of the moment. _

For that one night the world had been in a perfect place. Hector had taken her breathe away with very touch.

A tear slid down her face as she remembered what he had said to her. That'd he'd always be there.

"Where are you now then my love?" she asked at the sky as she went outside to see the stars. To see just a little bit of what had made them so perfect, that night so brilliant.

They were there as always. As long as they were there, so was her hope…

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	4. Death

_**Chapter 4: Death**_

The Aztec gold had to be retrieved. That was all Barbossa knew. He had to lift this curse.

When he had taken the gold he had dreamt of riches beyond what he had dreamt of and he had got no such thing.

For a while he had dined with pleasant and pleasing 'ladies' and he used the term loosely, but the more he spent, the more he disliked them and there manners. Nothing satisfied him and he searched the world for some thing else, some thong better, to be any thing than what he had become since he had left that damned women all those years ago.

He had only got to become this half thing, neither living nor dead. He had no riches. He was not the glorious captain her had wanted to be when he had taken the Pearl. The crew blamed him for there misfortune behind his back and he knew it.

Maybe he was meant to be cursed he thought to himself. Maybe he was just one of those people who deserved no happiness.

He thought of what he had done to Jack, and to Bill Turner, and to Helen and the singular piece of him which still was intact with his conscience felt sick at himself. For all the pain he had caused.

He had not just killed men. It had been women and children too. He and the guns of the Pearl had made sure together they had brought down complete communities. How many husbands had lost their wife's because of him. And how many of them deserved death really he wondered.

What would Helen say if she could see him now? He knew. She was scorn him, call him and coward and turn him away. Never again call him her love. The words part of him craved. Had been craving for so long.

But every time he thought of going back instead he planned the next attack, on the next fort. He had said he never wanted to see her again. And that had been true at the time. But no longer was it, he didn't think any thing could be as fair as she had been that day when she had been crying, begging him not to go.

He was looking for the medallions though; there was sense in it, what he was doing. He had to get back to how he had been so he could move on with some one new, some one better than the love before. Some one to fool himself with that he was in love with her and not Helen.

He wanted to taste apples. He wanted to enjoy rum. He wanted to feel the warmth of a woman's skin.

It had been ten years to the day pretty much since he had marooned Jack on that island.

That was the night he was going to attack Port Royal.

-

Part of her was glad she had nothing to do with the Pearl of its master any more thought Helen as she sat at the tavern.

To her it sounded as it Jack had really lost it.

He was going around blowing up ports, destroying lives. It was so very cruel. How could he do it? Was ruining his best friend's relationship and what could have been family not enough?

She only hoped Hector had got off the ship in time and had nothing else to do with Sparrow.

Maybe he had left the Pearl year's ago. She just didn't know.

What was the world coming too? She wondered to herself. Pirating was one thing. What the crew of the Pearl was doing was just cruel.

"Helen?" she heard a voice asked.

"Yes Giselle?" she asked.

"Do you think all those tales we are hearing of the Pearl are true. Yer used to have a lot ter do with it didn't you?" she asked.

"More the crew than the ship but yes, that was near enough ten years ago now. I have not seen the Pearl in years and I would not want to. If these tales are true Sparrow has turned in to a hateful creature indeed." She said thoughtfully to the blonde.

"What do you mean about Jack?" she asked her.

"Well he is the captain of the Pearl…" she said to her.

"No he isn't." Giselle laughed. "He hasn't been that for a long time though mind when I met him he was still calling himself captain 'Jack Sparrow' so maybe he is, I don't know." Said the blonde.

"Well of course he is." she said to her. "I mean he has been captain for the Pearl for years."

"Yeah but…" said Scarlett who had been listening to the conversation from where she had been standing. "He has this first mate see and 'bout ten years ago he committed mutiny against Jack, left him on an island, named himself the captain."

"You two have got it so wrong." Helen shook her head. "I knew his first mate. He'd never do some thing like that."

"Well that was what Jack said to me."

"Oh and Jack Sparrow has never told lie has he?" said Helen firing up. Hector wouldn't have… not unless he was really mad…furious. Like the day when he called her a whore.

And this supposed mutiny would have happened just after that event.

He wouldn't have, would he?

"I have to go." She said to them and run out of the tavern with out finishing her shift. She knew she should. She and the kids needed the money, but she had to think, to get out of there.

Hector, well that just sounded exactly like something he could do if he wanted too, but he wouldn't, she didn't think. When he put his mind to some thing he had always seen it through. But she hadn't seen him in so long. What did she know about him now? It felt like yesterday when he had been there in her bed… but it hadn't been.

Running down the dock she didn't know where she was going. She just had to get out. Out of her head, off this island, some where new. Some where she could be with the old Hector she had known so well. And then she looked down, she saw the sea and her fathers face.

She ran back

"Oh god, oh god, oh god." She said to her self as she stepped on to the beach.

If it was true, that Hector had taken the Pearl for himself, which she prayed he had not then it was he who was doing all these awful things to so many people. Innocent ones.

"Please say it isn't so." She said to the wind just as she had all those years back when she had said she had been having her loves children.

"I am afraid it is so." She heard a voice she had not heard in years from behind her.

"Jack…" she said as she spun round to see his face.

"Ello luv," he said to her.

"How do you know what I am on about?" she said to him.

"I know you love, and yer always saw him through yer rose tints." He said. Beside him she noticed a young man, younger than her certainly. He could be no more than twenty years, and was rather clean looking compared with the utter scoundrel by his side.

"And he is now going round the Caribbean doing all these awful things?" she asked nervously.

"Aye, I am sorry Helen," he said to her.

"This is all your fault. Why did you come that night?" she asked him, at long last. She had been desperate to ask that for years.

"Curiosity." He explained loosely. "It wasn't all my fault the way I remember it Helen."

"He was a good man when I knew him." She said to him. "It was only after every thing gone on between me and you that things went wrong for me and Hector." She said.

"Maybe… but that is in the past now. We have to look to the future, so we'll be on our way." He said to her turning.

"Well can I help you?" she asked him.

"Maybe," he nodded, wondering if she just wanted information about Barbossa now or if she really wanted to know what he was up too. "I'll come down to the house tonight." He said to her.

"Right," she said to him. Maybe he had some news he had to give her from Hector she thought to herself, before stopping herself from thinking that way. Why did she still care for what he had to say to her? He was a murderer. He had been doing appalling things. Because of him mothers were cradling the corpses of there sons. She couldn't imagine how that felt and she never wanted to find out.

But there was part of her that still loved him, for all his and her sins. She thought part of her always would.

In fact all of her would for eternity. She had been living in the past for so long, she wasn't sure she knew how to look to the future any more.

Going down to the house she put dinner on, enough for her Jack, the other man (who she rightly assumed would be attending) and the kids. She told them they could stay out late as she had guessed going over. They didn't argue.

Now that they were ten the kids seemed to have really developed in to there own people.

Jane was a strange young soon to be woman. Stronger than she had ever been. She only hoped her daughter never gave her heart, in these waters if you gave it, you never got it back.

Hector had grown in to a young man gracefully, mentored by Andrew, thought Helen bitterly. She was grateful for his help but he had spent so much time with him that he had seemed to lose all the passion she thought he had got from his father when he had been a young boy. He wanted to be a good sailor when he was older now, no pirate. That should never be, she thought to herself.

But after what she had learnt did she want the children to be like their father? Not at all, not any more.

The kids had stopped asking about him as they had got older. The obsession with getting him back had ended for them. And now part of it had for their mother too. It was tainted with bitterness now, as were all the good memories he had made with her.

Jack and the other man who she learnt was call Will got to hers for eight.

"Be back before sun down." She called to the twin's who she had ensured had already eaten before they had gone out to play.

"Will be mama." called Jane back to her.

Going back in to the house, she felt was if shed was betraying Hector all over again by letting Jack and Will in but she had to speak to them to find out what he had been doing all these past years.

"Has he ever mentioned me to you," she said to jack.

"Love, I have not come face to face with him in almost as long as you haven't." he told her.

"But you are going after him?" she asked.

"Yes," he said to her.

"To do what?" she asked.

"To free Elizabeth" said Will.

-

Hector walked in to the captains apartments. Miss Elizabeth Turner was there waiting for him.

She was a fine, pretty little thing he thought to himself. Pleasurable? Maybe he would fin out after dinner he thought to himself.

That dress though… it had never been meant for her. It had been in its gift box for over a decade. It had been intended for the passionate young women he had loved. It would have suited Helen down to the ground he thought to himself, even as he saw another on it.

It had been for her to say sorry. He hadn't meant to stay away so long. He hadn't meant to make her cry. He hadn't meant to fall in love with her. But it turned out she was the one who had needed to be sorry in the end.

With as deep sigh, he sat down at the table. He poured Miss Turner some wine and begun to tell her what he needed her for.

-

"He really has become a twisted fool hasn't he?" asked Helen sadly.

"He is not the man neither I nor you used to know." Jack explained to Helen gently.

"Did you ever tell him that he was a father, for I never got the chance?" she said.

"I tried to tell him but he didn't listen to me." He said to her.

"Well that's sounds like Hector. He was always so pig headed." She said with weak smile, which still displayed the fondness she had had for her lover.

Helen's eyes went to the table cloth, any thing to stop them from looking in to those of Jack Sparrow. That day had changed so much for her. She felt so numb.

"He is going to try and lift the curse he placed upon his self." Jack told her.

"And kill this young girl Elizabeth in the process," she asked and he nodded.

"He might, we do not know." He told her.

Then maybe he wouldn't. God, she hoped so. This girl was only eighteen. Only eight years older then Jane.

_Please let Hector come to his sense…_she thought.

"Well then she has my prayers and my sympathy's but that is all I can offer you!" She told him gently.

"If you came with us Helen maybe you can talk him round. Make him see what a mistake he is making, killing the girl. And you can get him to give me the Pearl back maybe. He always listened to you Helen." He tried to flatter her. She smirked. She should have known there'd be something in it for him.

"No I am sorry Jack but you know that is a lie. It was the other way round." She said the volume and strength in her voice dropping as she remembered her past. "I was so young and naïve. I hung off his every word. I wonder some days if he ever cared sixpence for me. Then I think of the reaction he had when he found out about us and I know yes he did care for me. Other wise he would never had taken the news so badly. But no, I have work, children here to raise. I can not leave," She said to him.

"In other words you are too afraid of the sea to follow your heart," he asked.

Slowly, she nodded.

Will looked at the aging women wondered how any one could love this Barbossa, as she clearly did. He was an evil man and he had done evil deeds. And yet she was so cool when she spook about him. There was some thing in her eye though, he thought as he saw the upset gather in them. There were no tears but there was a shadow in them. Of what might have been.

"You can not live in fear of what happened to your father for all of your days." Said Jack to her and she knew he was talking sense. "You let those whom you love go to sea."

"That is their choice; it was his choice to go. It had and will always be mine to stay." She said to him. "No I can not go to sea. Never have been able too."

She no longer thought it was fear of death that kept her from it though. It was fear of actually going and achieving her goal of finding him. He would ask her questions she did not wish to answer about her and Jack and if she could keep that from happening then she was.

She had always been so selfish here where it had come to Hector she thought to herself. All the children's lives she had had the chance to look for him. And yet she hadn't just for fear of her own heart getting hurt.

Helen's emotions were so conflicting all the time, she thought, she would happily return to him, other times she was so scared too.

So instead she just stayed on Tortuga, going to work. She lived a half life compared to what it had been. And she would always miss Hector, that much she did know. She'd miss his kisses, his firm embraced and the endless nights of love on the beach.

"When you find him what will you say to him? What will you do?" she asked him.

He had been dreading that question. He had been suspecting it would come. He wondered if it would be better for her if he were to lie to her. But he decided not. She had to be ready when the news came. She deserved that much.

"When he left me on the island, he left me a single pistol and a single shot as the code demands." He said and she understood with a nod of her head. "I vowed when he gave it to me the only person it would be used to kill would be him. I am sorry Helen."

"Then you mean to go to find hector to kill him?" she said breathlessly, not quite understanding. What ever she had been expecting it was evident to Jack that that had not been it.

"I have too." He stated and she bit back a heart broken sob. Just as Hector was a man of his word so was Jack, he actually meant to do this, she realised quickly.

"Please don't… please Jack…" she instantly begun sobbing.

"I have to for my honour, savvy? Surely you can understand that," he said feeling uncomfortable with her sobbing so. "Do you have message for him, I can pass on when it happens," he asked.

And she turned to him with tears filled eyes. "Just tell-l him t-t-that I l-l-love him." she wept trying hard to get out her words.

Jack nodded respectfully. "Come on." He said to Will who had been silent through out there meeting with her.

"Jack," she called to him as he left. "Is there no other way?" she asked.

"If there was I'd have taken it years ago. I am so sorry Helen." She said to her, knowing this hurt her heart more than any pistol could ever hurt Barbossa.

–

Will made his way to the chest. This was it. He was going to lift the chest and get Elizabeth back. Jack was going to kill Barbossa. He was so bitter. He deserved his fate. His mind cast back to the visit to Helen and he pitied her, and wondered how she take the news but it didn't stop his actions. Her love for Barbossa was in the past it seemed. His and Elizabeth's was the future.

The knife sliced in to his hand and he heard a pistol go off.

Elizabeth gasped.

"Ten years yer carry that pistol and now yer waste yer shot." Hector laughed at Jack.

"It wasn't wasted." Said Will, as he threw the last medallion to the chest.

Hector looked down at his own chest. He was bleeding. He was dying…it was over, but he had his senses back. He could feel the wind, and it was beautiful, a beautiful gift.

It was then Jack spoke again. "She gave you a son named Hector, and a daughter named Jane, and she asked I tell you she loves you still." Jack told him, surprisingly softly. He had given Helen his word that he would know at the end how she had felt for him. That was the least she could so for him.

Hector eyes lit up. He knew who _she_ was. The governor's daughter and the black smith watched as he seemed to change. From the cruel pirate who had put them through so much to some else. How to describe him they didn't know. But he wasn't the Barbossa they knew.

Jack looked at him and knew who he was in that moment. Helen's hector.

"I feel…" he said as he tried to picture her face in his head, and for the first time could not. "Cold….Helen." he whispered, crying out for her almost, dreaming she was by his side. Then… nothing.

Back at Tortuga, Helen awoke. The tears begun. She knew he was gone.


	5. Destiny’s Touch

An: **Spoilers for AWE** are going to be creeping in soon, just be warned.

_**Chapter 5: Destiny's Touch**_

When the twins got up the next day they found there mother already up. She was sitting at the kitchen table sand she had been crying.

Her heart break was evident. Neither of them knew what had gone on, or what to say to her. Neither of them had ever seen her in such a state before. She had never cried in front of them before.

So they just moved around her quietly. She felt do isolated, she remembered the last day when she had seen Hector how she had been left stranded on the dock and she got a weird feeling of de ja vu.

"I am so sorry children." She said to them once they were sat down. "He is gone and I don't think he is ever going to come back." She said as another tear slide down her face.

"Who mama?" asked Jane.

"Your father – Hector…"

The twin's looked to each other with confusion and the slightest bit of hope despite there mother had said he was gone. She never spoke to them of him.

"How is he gone?" said Hector eager to hear news of the man who he had craved for so long.

"He is dead," she said to the two of them. There own hearts broke despite the fact they had never met him, that was clear. Jane begun to weep, and Hector just sat in a stunned silenced.

Helen moved to put her arms round her daughter and she accepted the embrace, needing her mother at that moment.

"Were those men who were here the other night, bringing you news of papa?" she asked, working it out for herself.

"Yes they did. I am sorry I did not tell you sooner children but a lot has gone on in your mothers head of late." She said as she kissed her daughters forehead.

"You will miss papa?" asked Hector.

"Very much son. He was a good man, and he was a pirate too." She said to them.

"He was a pirate?" asked Jane with a smiled. She had never been told that by her mother. She knew so little of the man who should have brought her up.

Hector gave a small grin. He had always known he thought. He had figured it out when he himself had been out in the dingy with Andrew, and when they had been speaking of the differences between good sailors and pirates.

"How do you know he is dead?" he asked.

"Call it a sixth sense if you will." She said to him and he nodded, knowing she would only tell them this news if she really believed it to be the truth.

"Will you two be ok if I go down to the beach for a moment or two? I need to get my head together." She said to them and both nodded.

"We will be ok mama won't we?" asked Jane.

"Of course we will. After all, what's really changed for the three of us?"

Both the kids shrugged. They guessed that was true. They had never had him and so they would never be able to miss him.

Their mother would though.

It wasn't long till Helen found herself sitting on the edge of the dock looking down at the water thinking over what Jack had said to her. She couldn't spend her life in fear of it.

If she had not been so scared, then she would have gone with him to where ever he was going to see Hector and she would have stopped it.

She had had a chance to save her love, but she had not taken it.

He could never now be with her; she had not gone to him. What sort of love was that? What sort of lover was she?

No wonder he had left her all those years ago she thought to herself.

Helen now knew of her fate though and for that part of her was grateful. There was to be no more dreaming. She was just doomed to be alone. One day she would have to watch the children go to sea. And just like there father, and grand father before him they would not return to her. Then she would end up a bitter old women cold and alone, loving no one, hating life, willing death to take her more every day.

How had this come to pass?

Now as she looked about herself, all she saw was her with her love. The ghost of Hector seemed to be every where for Helen. He was on the beach kissing her. They were walking hand in hand to the tavern. They were every where.

"I'll never be able to forget." She said to the wind.

"_A pint please love," Helen heard a voice from behind her. _

_The slim women nodded, "just a minute." She said as she got another punters drink. It was another busy night in tavern and she had to say she was finding it hard to keep up. _

_She had only even been on this god forsaken island a few months. _

_Turning she saw a pirate. Well that was nothing new, not any more. She had had a right shock when she had seen her first real Caribbean pirate but if they were in Tortuga they were generally a friendly lot… unless they were punching each other. _

_She turned to see a man standing there. She had no idea it was Hector Barbossa at that moment. It was hard to think that when she had first seen him she had thought he was just another no body. _

"_A pint was it?" she checked and he nodded, his eyes following her all the way round the bar as she got the drink. _

_She had asked for the money and he had added some more. "Yer a fine thing," he had cockily told her. "Yer deserve somethin' pretty." She hadn't argued. She had simply thrown a smile his way, and enjoyed the compliment. _

-

Giselle, Scarlett, Emily and the twins looked over at the dock. It was surprisingly clear of ships that night. All they saw was their friend and mother, her heart break showing in every way possible.

"Papas death has hit her hard." Said Jane.

"She has not seen him in years, I don't see how she can still be pining for him." said Emily.

"She never did open up to any about him though did she?" asked Giselle. "Never accepted she lost him the first time round I don't think."

"No, not really," said Emily. "When she was down she used to say random little comments about him but nothing solid. She missed him. She was always so self righteous though before that day," she mused.

"What day?" asked Hector.

"You will find out in time little one, but for now, I can say. I fear speaking of it and reminding her of it will only add to your poor mother's grief."

"Emily?" said Scarlett. "The man she used to love. Was he the first mate on the Black Pearl once, a long time ago?" she asked.

"I do believe he was" she nodded, sighing.

"Well that was why she got so upset when we spoke of what that first mate was doing now." Said she to Giselle who nodded.

"What does it matter now what he did in life?" said Jane. "Papa is dead. Mama will never get over it. She is beside herself."

"She has been shattered by her grief." She nodded "but she will recover, some day she will, I promise you. Helen is stronger than even she knows."

-

Jack had once again returned Tortuga. Again he needed a crew. A crew this time he would hand straight to Davy Jones in order to pay for his own soul. He needed a hundred to settle his debt.

He was in the tavern when he looked at the bar and he saw Helen. She was on her shift for the night.

All his life he had run from his duty. But there fates had been intertwined for a long time now. He owed it to her to be straight with her.

Going over to her slowly he observed her. The first thing that struck him was she had lost weight. Her clothes which had always been like rags since Hector had left her were hanging off her skeleton frame. It wasn't a pleasant sight when before when he had went to her for dinner she had been of a nice weight, not too slim, but by no means fat.

She must have kept herself out of the sun for shine had become as white as a ghost.

When she saw him her face confirmed all he had thought. She needed no confirmation. She knew he was gone.

"If you have cone to comfort me Captain Sparrow please don't waste your breathe or yoke time. You killed him." she said to him as yet more tears filled her eyes, all she ever seemed to do was cry, ever since Jack had come back in to her life. It was all she wanted to do.

"Helen it had to be done." He told her.

"No it didn't. I will always blame myself, don't you see. I should have got on that ship to save his life. But I didn't, because I was scared. And now I have to face my biggest fear. Life with out hope Jack. Don't you see its all gone." She whispered to him.

He couldn't have felt more guilty. Her eyes showed what she had said to be true. She felt she had nothing left since she had learnt of her lover's death. She had tried to tell her self that her children were enough for her, she would go on for them and she was sure in her soul she would find a way to do just that. But when she was really down and when her soul was in so much pain she felt it would break her body, she just wanted to die. To crawl up and for it all to be over. To be with him once more. Her passion had turned to love once, and in the same way her love had turned to obsession.

"Did he suffer?" she asked.

"No Helen, it was over quickly."

"Well I guess that's some thing." She said trying to fight back the tears on hearing he didn't suffer. Not really.

Seeing Jack again felt odd. On what hand he had murdered he whom she had adored for years on end. In one sense it gave her courage.

It was then that Emily came in to the room where they had been talking,

"Helen it is the children. They want you to go back and tuck them in tonight and they will not settle other wise." She said to her friend.

"I want too go back but I can not. We are strapped for money more than ever, you know that." she said depressed. Why did nothing go right for her?

"Go on get off," said Emily. "I can finish your shift and you can have the money. It is only an hours work left." She said to her friend.

"Would you? Oh Emily thank you so much." She said to her as she went to embrace her. The older they got, the more the two of them thought of the other as their sister.

Just as she was leaving the bar, Jack went up to her again.

"I want you to have this Helen," he said as he pushed a purse in to her hand. It had money in it; she could feel even from the out side.

"I don't need charity." She said to him seriously.

"I know you don't. You always said you needed no mans pity. Again I don't offer it. Let's just say this is a present from an old friend." He said to her.

She nodded. As much as she wanted to give it back to him, she knew she could not. She needed it too much.

"Thank you." She said to him and went to give him a kiss on the cheek in gratitude, before pulling back.

Seeing she probably needed the affection though thought Jack to himself, pulled her in to embrace her. But there was no warmth in it for her. To Helen, Jack would only ever be the man who had killed her Hector.

"Thank you." She said again before running off to be with her son and her daughter.

Getting back in to the house early, the kids were happy there plan had worked to get there mother home with them.

"What is all this I hear about the two of you playing up for Emily?" she asked playfully as she went in to there room.

"We wanted you to tuck us in mama. You have not in so long.," said Hector as he tried to get out of bed but with as single look Helen put a stop to that.

Pushing him gently under the covers, she smoothed out his hair gently and kissed him on the fore head.

"It is late my little one." She said to him, kissing his fore head. "You both need sleep," she said as she went over to Jane and kissed her too.

"Can we not have a story?" Jane asked her mother.

"Not tonight my dear. Maybe tomorrow. In fact definitely tomorrow," she said to her. "Though I think if a mother takes care of her babies as she should, a story every night is not so much to ask." She said to them with a smile. "Good night my dears, god bless. I love you both very much, sweet dreams."

Well, she thought as she left her children. She could be a lot worse off. If Hector had died, then so be it. She had not. The twins had not. Normal life had to be sought through all the pain and confusion. She had to go on.

Her one regret was she never truly got to say good bye.

The next ay Emily, Andrew and their son Peter came over to dinner. It was a nice meal which during Helen smiled and laughed with every one else. It was a relief for her children to see her so happy.

As they finished there was a knock on the door.

"Who can that be at this time?" she said to them, as she took a sip of wine. "Just excuse me a sec."

Going over to the door, she opened it to Giselle.

"Oh hello," said Helen.

"You ok Helen?" she asked and she nodded. "Good, but yer might not be in a minute. The boss up the tavern wants to see yer."

"Oh what does he want? Tonight's the first night off I have had in ages." She said, knowing she would have to go. "Well ok, I tell him I am non my way." She said and the blonde nodded before walking back up to the tavern.

"But mama you said we could have a story tonight!" said hector to her.

"And you will!" said Helen. "I am going to tell you one just as soon as I get back. Andrew, Emily can you just hang on here, I wont be more than twenty minutes."

"I think we can certainly do that after you gave us such a wonderful dinner!" said Andrew.

"Thank you. Children, get in your might clothes, be ready for bed when I get back," said Helen as she got ready, wrapping a tatty old brown shawl about herself. "I am not going to be long."

Going out in to the night she found it quite cold. A breeze had been blowing all day and it wasn't nice for the inhabitants of the island who were generally used to glorious sun shine that they enjoyed.

Walking along the old dusty road down to the village, Helen was unnerved by it for the first time in years. She had been nervous when she had first started living down at the house but she had over time got used to it. But that night she felt as if she was being followed…. Watched.

It was at that moment as her fear set in, some one grabbed her from behind.

-

The priestess walked in to the back bedroom of her home to see her guest wide awake, sitting by his side, his loyal monkey.

"Der two of yer were no doub' glad to be reunited." Said Tia to him.

"What me and Jack? Yer." Said Hector to her.

Death had a strange way of making you see what was really important, though. There was another reunion he was looking forward to even more.

He couldn't believe he had walked away from Helen all those years any more, though at the time it had been the right thing to do he knew and had stayed away through pride. That had been a mistake. What had happened to him when he had been killed had made him look inside of himself and hear what his heart was telling him.

She was all he wanted. She was every thing. Her and his children. His son and his daughter. They were the only three that mattered now, well apart from Jack.

"How long do yer suppose this journey will be taking?" asked Hector, eager to know when he could really go home.

"Dat depends on how successful we are, does it not?" she asked, her voice laced by her thick accent

"I suppose so." He nodded sighing heavily.

"Der is a wait on yer heart hector Ba'bossa. What is it?" asked Tia.

"I made a mistake ten years ago. I don't know if it is too late to put it right or not." He mourned.

"No mistake is unfixable, Captain." She said to him, giving him hope for his future.

It was that day, Hector vowed no matter what he had to do, where he had to go, he would find his Helen. And then he would win her back.

-

As much as she had fought them, it wasn't long till Helen had been how come by the muggers. She didn't see why they were attacking her though. She had nothing to give.

When the two boys looked down on her and saw who it was though, they both looked at each other with concern.

Though Tortuga was not run on any laws, and there was no hierarchy what so ever, the permanent residences had always looked out for each other.

Helen was well known in the community even if she had never allowed her to be friendly enough to be well loved by some people.

If they were caught having attacked her, they would be in huge trouble.

A defenceless mother of two. They'd be hung for it by some of the regular's at the tavern who got used to her serving them night after night.

And so they decided to his the evidence.

Together they took her body, put it in a dingy and sent her out to the sea. They would not kill her. The waves and current would.

When Helen awoke her head, she thought, had never ached so much. She tried to remember what had gone on but she couldn't. All she remembered was she had been jumped. One of them had called the other 'Jameson', but she hadn't got a look at them.

Where was she? Who was she with? The kids… she should be giving them a story.

"Hector… Jane … loves are you here?" she asked as she opened her eyes.

Where ever she was, the ground was rocking. She had never felt so ill since she had crossed the sea to get to Tortuga.

"Oh my god." She said as she realized where she was.

Looking about only confirmed her worse fear. She was at sea, totally alone.

She lay herself back down and lay in silence, hoping some how she would be ok.

-

Hector's eyes snapped open. He had been in a peaceful dream when it had become infected with images of Helen at sea. Alone, fearful.

They weren't just images. He knew they were realty. How he knew he didn't know, he just did.

He had to get to her. But the trouble was he was still weak. Being brought back from the dead was no easy thing.

He had barely got up, and as he struggled to his feet he feel from the bed alerted Tia. He had to recover properly from his ordeal… but he felt he could not when Helen's was just beginning.

"Ba'bossa yer should not be up yet, wat hav' I told yer, rest!" she said as he helped him back bed.

"But Helen. She's in danger. Calypso yer must help her." he said to her.

"I could, if I were not bound." She told him sadly. "I will do all I can fer yer women." She said to him.

He nodded slowly, feeling colder than ever. Why had he shut her out? They had been so good together, so close. All the old decisions had lost there meanings. The excuses he had used at the time were not reasons.

"Yer have not seen her in years have yer?" she asked seeing the sadness in his eyes.

"It has been to o long, that be true," he said. "I'm going to get back to her," he promised himself again.

But that night when he fell asleep again, he saw some thing that put deeper fear in to his soul than ever before. It was Helen. But this time it was so much worse.

She was under the water. No longer was she crying fear. Her face was peaceful now. There was no fear. She was under the water and she had stopped fighting the sea. She was dead.

The last thing he saw in that dream was the boat that she had been in capsized.


	6. The Return Journey

_**Chapter 6: The Return Journey**_

"I found this."

Andrew didn't think he had ever seen such pain in his wife's eyes as she held on to the shawl he had found on the dirt track road.

It was day break. Helen had gone on the previous night and she had never returned.

The twins had not slept for worry about there mama and as they looked at the shawl with the women they thought of as there second mother utter despair came in both there hearts.

"I think maybe mama is with papa now." Said Jane, as a tear slide down her face.

"We don't know that sweetheart." Said Emily as she pulled Jane on to her lap. Hector went over to Andrew and stood by him, going in to a state of shock.

They had walked up and down that road all there lives. They had always been fine so what had happened to their mother last night that should have made it so different than how it had always been.

"Where do you think she is?" Hector asked Andrew.

"I don't know son. I just don't know."

-

Tia Dalma looked at Hector. He had been up and about for a couple hours when she went to him.

She had two very ill pieces of news brought to her that day. One was that Jack Sparrow had been taken to Davvy Jones' locker. The other, that Hector's love had been found a drift at sea. She had been found dead.

He knew it though, she thought to herself. It had been written on his face as obvious as any thing.

He didn't want it mention it to her though. There was some thing about the enchantress that he did not trust. Some thing to her… he couldn't pout his finger on it. He didn't like it though.

"What news has the wind brought yer terday Calypso?" He said using the rightful name for her, instead of Tia. She had never been Tia Dalma to him.

"Jack Sparrow." She said and his first reaction she noted was too sigh. That name was hated universally she some times thought. Where ever witty Jack went he took trouble with him. There were some people who were not grateful for that like she had been at the time when they had met. But she knew he and Jack had a long history together. One of trouble, strife and betrayal. "He has been taken to Davy Jones locker."

"At last." He muttered. Good, he thought to himself. Let the barsted rot in hell for all he cared. In fact it was better he was in the locker, that was so much worse than hell.

"Yer need to go and get 'im back fer me." She said to him, and he had to think over what she had said.

The world was free of him at last! He thought to himself, why would any one ever want that man to return to it?

"And why would I do that?" he asked.

"So I can be free to be with me love, the sea again," she said to him.

"And in return what do I get for going on this great quest." He asked cynically.

"I brought yer back from de dead, did I not?" she asked him.

"And I asked yer too did I?" he asked her. "No. I was better left as I was. You had no right ter do what yer did Calypso. It was over. Why couldn't yet just leave be?"

"Because yer time on dis earth is not over yet Ba'bossa. Yer have much left to do, to be." She said to him.

"If you can bring me back, then surely you can bring near any one back?" he stated. "that be true?" he asked rising his eye brow, getting up sand going out on to the balcony to look over the river that lead out of this little safe haven he had been brought back too,

"Aye dat be true."

"Then bring back Helen, and I'll do any thing you want me too." He nodded.

"I think yer forget Ba'bossa it was by my powers yer returned and I can send yer back just as easily. It is not yet place to be bargaining with me." She said.

"Is it not? Go on then," he said calling her bluff.

"What?" she said in disbelief.

"I do not fear death," he said to her. "Send me back, only yer wont, will you." He told her. "Don't yer see? Calypso yer be needing me more than I need you," he said as Jack the monkey found his way on to his masters shoulder.

"We will find 'er on de oda side." She said to him, submitting herself to his commands.

"Right. Then I will do any thing yer ask of me, but just so yer know. We are not coming back ter this world with out her," he said seriously.

"Very well."

"Then we have an accord?"

-

Just five days later Barbossa found himself on the ship he had just got from Sao Feng at Singapore, with many people he had never thought would sail under his command doing just that.

There was Master Turner, trying to do the right thing by all accounts as bloody usual. He had Calypso no doubt coming to add a touch of destiny he thought to himself, mockingly. And finally he had the charming Miss Elizabeth Swann. Wonders would never cease.

Where he was going he didn't know. But that was a good thing, he though as he tried to figure out the charts. To find the place he was going to he had to be good and lost.

With every step of this journey he felt more intense, and more and more emotions. He had never felt so many conflicting one at once.

On one hand he had a chance to get back every thing he had ever dreamed of, and with it gain more. If he did what he had proposed to then he was going to get himself a family.

But old betrayals were hard to forgive and what ever angle he took on it there was still no forgiven what his Helen and Jack had done to him all those years ago.

But it was time to let go of his pride he thought to himself. There was some thing more important than pride in this life and that was happiness. With out the children and Helen he didn't think he was ever going to get to be that, not know he knew of them.

Not any more. Maybe once. Before his death for sure. He had been so angry at the world that he had wanted nothing more than for that fan curse to be over.

But there was another curse on the heart of Hector Barbossa. That was love, and passion and the need to feel it in return for him.

To think, he, a grown an needed love was stupid he knew. But at the end of the day he was only human. He was like every one else. Just because he did not have the good looks of William Turner or apparently irresistible charm of Sparrow, didn't mean he didn't want women just as much as they did. And he had one, or he had once upon a time. And if he recovered her, he would be faithful to her, as long as she was to him.

-

"Where yer going jack?" asked Hector with a smile on his face.

He was going aboard his ship again and he was going to get the Pearl back some how, at the end of the day in his heart he believed that.

Even if Jack didn't want to sail with him he had no choice. He had to because he didn't know where he was going otherwise. Hector loved leverage when he had it.

"I am going back to the living world mate, dunno where your going." Said Jack to him with a smirk in reply.

"And how are yer planning to get there with out these here charts. I don't suppose you know the way on your own." He said to him.

"Oh bugger." Said Jack as he realised there was no way to get back with out the five he had planned on leaving behind.

If there was ever a lot who deserved the locker it was Elizabeth, Barbossa Will, Pintel and Ragetti.

"Indeed," said Barbossa as he went over to Tia. He would stay close to her now he decided through the journey for she was the one who was going to know when they were going to come across his Helen. He almost wished she had been in the locker waiting for him. At least that way he would have seen her again by now.

"She is coming." She said knowing what he is going to say. "I have my witty Jack back, and you will get your reward for the services you have done me getting us here."

It had hardly been an easy journey for any of them. They had gone from the nice warm Caribbean sun to the freezing cold. Every one had suffered for it, and now there pain seemed to have paid off.

Whether it was really though still remained to been seen when they got back to the world of the living. Hopefully they had not survived just to be killed again.

The sail out of the locker was easier than the one in it seemed as they got going for Hector, though Jack seemed to think it was fun to spend the whole journey annoying him.

"It will happen tonight," he heard a voice in his ear. It was Calypso.

"She will come along in a boat," she said to him.

"And you can save her from there?" he checked.

"I can not say for sure. It depends on her." She explained.

"What you be meaning it depends on her." he said fiercely. "Yer said yer can save her." he said to her.

"And I can but only if she wants to be saved. If she is at rest wid her fate, den I can not force her to return if she do not want to." She explained.

"Then how could you bring me back?" he asked.

"Isn't it obvious, you wanted life Hector Ba'bossa. Never have yer been one for sitting on e while der rest of you hav' all der fun."

"Helen was. She hated trouble or any thing like that. Used to say she'd do any thing for a quiet life when I be trying to get her to come aboard the Pearl with me." He said as hope failed him for a moment.

"She has a lot to return for Hector. She had children who need der moder desperately." She reminded him. "Wait and see what she does. For no one can call it yet, weder she will chose to go on to the other side, or to return to her old life."

-

Helen lay awake in her boat, her eyes glazed. She was dead now and she knew it. There seemed no way back it seemed to her.

"I was meant give them a story though." She said to the starry sky as she thougbt of her kids. They would finish there childhoods now no doubt on Emily's watch. That wasn't a bad thing. She had always been a better role model than Helen had been even when they were young.

It really beautiful the sky though thought Helen. There was some thing up there. A magic at work she thought ti herself.

Some thing so peaceful… wasn't she meant to be peaceful now she was dead, and if so why did she have so much unrest and fear in her heart. There was so much she was yet to do.

-

Elizabeth turned in to will her entire body shaking with grief for her father. He had gone, she was dead.

Will held on to her tight, that was all he could do for her now.

The entire crew was looking at them, all except one. Barbossa.

"Come on," he said to the sea. He was so close to her now he could feel her. She was here she was, he just had to find her.

His eyes were so excited as they looked through the water trying to find her face.

At last, he did. It seemed to him to taken for ever but there she was at last.

"Helen," he whispered with a smile. Ten years had clearly done a lot to her, that was written all over her face. The wrinkles that had only begun when he had left her had becoming deeper.

Her hair was longer and bushier than it had been when they had knew each other truly. But there she was, her heart had not changed…. His Helen…his sweet Helen.

"HELEN!" he cried out to her desperate for her to notice him up on the ship.

It was at that time that the crew turned to see there captain trying to get the attention of a girl many of them didn't know. Jack did though.

"Bloody hell." He said as he saw his old one time lover.

-

Helen looked up at the huge boat and wondered what had happened. Had they been fighting as sea, and all the sailors had died due to the accident.

She didn't think so. It was going the other way. It was going back to life.

"HELEN!"

Some one from it was calling her name. Through the darkness… It was as if there was light.

Her eyes turned to see through it… who was it?

She could see the figure.

"Yes," she whispered, her heart barely daring to hope… could it be?  
"COME ABORAD, HELLEN ITS BE ME… IT'S HECTOR!"

It was him. All her hopes and all her dreams had brought the to this moment she thought to herself. Her body begun shaking with happiness. His face, his voice…him.

Looking out the boat though she felt sick. Water was all by her. all about her. She had tried to ignore it and she had been able to. Till now.

"Hector I can't get out, the sea!" she said to him, tears in her eyes once again. She had to get to him, she couldn't sail by.

Surely she had got over that by now he thought to himself. If she didn't get out the boat soon the dream was over. For both of them.

"Helen, Helen, listen to me!" He said as he saw her begin to panic. "The line," he muttered to Calypso over his shoulder and she got the rope for him.

Once he had it he tossed it out to Helen and she grabbed it. "I am not going to let you die ok, you need to trust me!" he told her. "Can yer do that? Put yer trust in me. Darlin', please…" He told her and she nodded.

This would be so much easier if he could get off the boat he thought to himself…but he couldn't.

She nodded and clung to the rope as he pulled her in to the side of the Pearl. He dragged the dingy to where she could get up to the deck.

"Come on Helen, come to me." He said to her.

He was standing up the top. She was mere feet away from her love. So mustering all the courage she had, she took a step out of the boat and on to the rudders. Every one was watching her that made it worse. Tears of fear and joy trickled from eyes to her cheeks. This was the moment she had been waiting a decade for.

She took it one step at a time until at last, she felt the top of the boat, and Hector's hand grabbing her, and it was like the wind blowing against her on a too hot day. All the pain seemed worth it at last.

She stepped on to the safety of the Pearl, and went in to the safety of Hector's embrace. He pushed a firm kiss to her forehead.

At long last, they were reunited.

An: Aww, finally!!! Yay I had fun on that chapter. Get ready for some fire works in the next one though.

I know in the film Calypso could not save people when they were in the boats, ie, Liz's dad, but I hope I explained the AU theory I was working with that if some one was not happy to go to there fate, then they could return if some one was there to take them back.

Please Review!


	7. Faith

_**Chapter 7: Faith**_

Hector took Helen by the shoulders and gently begun to guide her on to the deck, to the stairs and down to the captains cabin. All the other crews' members were lookikng at her with confusion, on why he had saved her no doubt, and she looked worried, and rather scared by all the new faces. Was it any wonder, he thought to himself? The girl had just died. And then suddenly she was alive again, and with the man who had walked out on her ten years before hand, with him hitting her as her last memory of him.

She looked at him, with an expression he had never seen before. She had so many emotions running through her and she didn't know what one to express to him, it seemed.

Walking over to her, he gently brushed a piece of her hair out of her face, and cupped it with his hand. She leant in to him for a moment; taking the peace he offered her. His fingers gently caressed her cheek and she felt as if she might just melt away with happiness. Every touch was still so familiar.

But then the memory of the past ten years came back to her, and suddenly she didn't feel so inclined to be friendly to him. True enough the event that had caused there split had happened because of her weakness, but it was because of him they had never talked things through.

Pulling away from him, she felt thoroughly annoyed at him. They couldn't just pick up where they had left off, both of them knew it. She didn't want him to touch her. The best thing about them had been the physically relationship. They had never been any good at talking, or sharing things. But both of them knew that the only way forward was to talk.

"You know I used to dream of this day Hector," she said to him, trying to find the courage to say what had to be said. "I didn't think it would be like this." She admitted. "I thought if I ever saw you again it'd be at the beach, our beach, do you remember?" she said and he nodded. "I thought I'd get there one day… and you'd be waiting for me. I'd run in to your arms and say how sorry I was for going with Jack, and you'd say sorry for staying away from me for so long and then the world would be right again." She said shaking her head. "I was always a fantasist wasn't I?" she asked bitterly

"Helen," he muttered, knowing how hard it was for her as it was just as hard for him. "I wanted to come back. But I couldn't."

"Because of your stupid pride no doubt." She snapped angrily. "It always kept so locked up at times. Locked up from me! I have to say I didn't think you'd keep it up for ten years though!" she said to him. "Do you know I have our children? We have a son and a daughter."

"I know…" he nodded. "Jack told me about Hector and Jane." He said and he could see the fact he knew about them aggravated her even more than she had been already. "I was touched, you called him after me."

"He's nothing like you." She shook her head. "My boy is going to be a good man."

"Our boy, Helen, ours."

"No, mine. If he was your you would have been there since the day he was born, just like I was?" She snapped. "I dunno maybe you would have run from me any way when you found I was pregnant. Not very pirate-y is it, to have a kid or two in tow? And piracy always came first to you."

"Don't immune me honour Helen. I would have been there had I known about them at the time there for you, and you know that. But life got in the way."

"We were your family. Your's Hector! How could any thing get in the way of that?" she said to him as a tear rolled on to her cheek. "Well except your pride."

"And your fear. If you'd just come on the Pearl none of this would have happened."

"Thanks, right Hector just blame me, because none of this is down to you is it?" she spat.

"Well obviously it is 'cause your snow bloody white aren't yer lass? Tell me Helen was Jack good?" he taunted her. "Was it better than us?" He said, taking his turn to be angry with her,

"Don't be stupid. You know it wasn't."

"Oh so not only am I now a bad father, I'm stupid with it!" he raged.

"I never said you were a bad father! I just said you have never been there." she said to him. "They are going to so scared. I only just told them a few days ago about your death. Now they think I'm gone too." She said, taking the heat out of there conversation, at least for the moment.

Going over to the bed she sat down. She couldn't wait to be back with her kids,. They had never been apart from for so long and she missed them so much it hurt.

"But yer not. Neither of us are." He said to her.

"I know." she nodded. "Doesn't change the way they think though, what they think does it?" she said to him. "I've tried to be a good mother to them. Tried to raise them how you'd want them to be." Admitting subconsciously he had always been on her mind and in her thoughts.

"What are they like?" he asked, interested.

"Mischievous, bright, some times a little naughty. There like all children. But I think they have their hearts in the right places." She told him gently. "They miss you. They ask about you some times and ever since I told them you were a pirate and before, Jane has wanted to sail the seven seas as a pirate. I think Hector might want to be a merchant sailor or a pirate. He wants to be a good man. He just hasn't figured out that you can be a good man and a pirate as well." She sighed.

"You talk of me to them?"

"I've had to. They see all the other kids with their papa's they wonder why they haven't got one."

"What did you tell them?"

"That'd you be with us if you could be. But you haven't been able too." she shrugged. "They were only young when I told them that and they have always accepted it to be the truth. And it is."

Putting her head in her hands she sighed in exhaustion. She hadn't had a row like that in so long.

Feeling an odd pity for her he went over and put his hands on her shoulders again, and smiled sadly at her.

"I would have been a good father." He promised her.

"You still can be. Don't you see we can go back to Tortuga?" she said hopefully. "The four of us can be together, a family?"

"Not yet we can't." He said to her.

"Why not?" Helen pouted.

"Because my sweet we have to go to the Brethren court. To get you back is not the only reason I came on this journey. Us being here together is my reward for doing what I must." He said to her.

"and what, must you have done?" she asked.

"Save Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones's Locker."

"And we are going to get him back now?" having not seen him on deck.

"No we be going back to the other world now we got him before you." He said to her.

"Ok let me get this straight. You saved the life of the man who shot you?" she asked.

"And how did yer come against that piece of information?"

"Does it matter, I know Hector. Come on lets just go home, if Jack is saved now?"

"But the rest of our world is not?" he said and begun to explain. "The east India trading company has seemingly lost its patience with us pirates and are trying to wipe us ok."

"What's new? And it is not like you don't have another home except the sea. Come back with me; move in, we can be a real family."

"That isn't what I be wanting though is it? I want the four of us on the Pearl together." He said to her. He would die at sea. He had lived his whole life on it he felt. If he had to die for it he would.

"But I – you know I am not good at sailing."

"Well you're doing it at the moment well enough aren't you?" he told her firmly.

"Only because I am distracted!" she cried.

"By what?"

"Us, you! I have barely taken my eyes off you since I got on to this ship if you hadn't noticed," she said to him.

"Are you still scared?" he asked gently and shame faced she nodded.

"Well we are really going to have ter be changing that." He said, and seeing how she had fallen silent decided it was time he tried to embraced her one again. He smiled as he realised timing had been perfect.

She shut her eyes and leant in to his chest, her hands gently laying on his back as the years washed away.

"Have I told you how much I missed you yet?"

"No darlin'" he said. "You haven't."

"Well I did." She admitted after all the anger. "You're the only one for me." She whispered. He had a terrible feeling that statement worked both ways.

"Good," he said as she yawned. "You should get some sleep." He told her.

"I can go with out." She told him. "When the twins were young I had to on nights on end with none." she exaggerated. "If one got to sleep then the other woke up half the time."

He gave a small chuckle as he took her hands in his. It felt so good, for them both. Raising her hand to his mouth he kissed it tenderly, making her blush. Nothing had changed between the two of them. Not really. "So what happens now?"

"We head for the Island of Shipwreck and the Brethren court."

"No I don't mean for the journey. I mean for us." She said. "Do we have each other?"

"We have each other always Helen." he promised.

"Then I am forgiven?" she asked.

"Yes, I think you are, providing be forgiven too."

"Of course me lord." she joked.

"Well then all be good." He said. "Now come on I have ter introduce yer to the crew." He said and the two of then went out.

She felt a lot stronger than she had been when she had first got on to the ship knowing that she and Hector were going to be ok, and were indeed going to be a family with the kids hopefully once all this was over. The dream may come true yet.

Going on to the deck was no easy thing for her to do though. When she had been in the captain's cabin she had been safe from the waves. She had been safe from the sea. She wasn't any more.

She gave a nervous smile and found her self standing on her own two feet very much alive, on the deck of a ship.

"Hello, fancy meeting you here." She said to Jack.

"Indeed. Odd occurrences… you die?"

"indeed." She nodded.

"Helen." She heard hectors voice from, behind her as he glanced her way disapprovingly as she spoke to Sparrow. Had they been back together longer then she would have teased him for his…. Jealousy? But, no it was too sooner. "Let me introduce yer to Master William Turner and Miss Elizabeth Swann," he said.

"Me and William have already met." She said to him. "Its pleasure to see you again."

Will had apart from Jack, Gibbs and Tia had been the only ones to have known of Helen before she had got on the Pearl. Knowing what she had been through he wondered how she felt. She looked happy enough but things were strained between him and Elizabeth and they hadn't even been apart lately, well not for long. Not like Helen and Barbossa. They had a lot to catch up on.

"And you." he said giving her a smile.

"Elizabeth, nice to meet you." She said noticing the girl's eyes were red from crying possible.

She silently nodded as she shook Helen's hand but that was it.

"Master William I was wondering if yer might do Helen here the honour of a lesson in swordsman ship as we go on our way to the Brethren once we are back." Said Hector.

"I won't have as need to fight though will I?" she asked panicked.

"Yer might." He nodded. In fact the thought it a strong possibility.

"But Hector I can not possible learn all that I need to know in a couple of hours.!" She said to him with pleading eyes. She did not want to fight.

"No you can't can yer? But you must try Helen. If things go wrong – yer must know what ter do. Try…for me…"

"But – ok." She said to him knowing he was speaking sense. She could not argue that.

"We have to get out this world first," said Elizabeth.

"Yes." nodded Jack as he went off. "Some one has to figure it out."

-

The day seemed to pass quietly. Much more quietly than any day had ever passed before on the Pearl.

"I guess if any one is mad enough to work it out, it is him." said Helen to Gibbs as they sat together.

The two of them had met previously when he had been living at Tortuga but only just then had he released the nature of her relationship with Barbossa. Gibbs had never been that friendly with Helen before. She had just been another bar maid. She had an ice maiden exterior that every one on the island had seemed to accept. Why should he had challenge it. But as they talked he realised appearances could be deceptive.

"Aye, captain Jack is only chance." He nodded. "If he can't get us out of here no one can." Be said as he held a bottle of rum in his hand.

"Do you think he will?" she asked.

"I have faith in him. Don't you?" he asked.

"I don't know. In my experience where ever that man goes he takes mischief." She shook her head.

"When it comes to our captain you have to remember some thing Helen. He wants to live for ever. He carries on the façade that not one thing in the world scares him. But if there is some thing that does then it is dying. Trust me, he lives for life. There is no way he is not going to get us out of here!" he comforted her.

"Good." She muttered. She could not stand the thought of being here for ever, even if she was with her love. She needed her children now.

Going up to their father on the top deck, she saw he was looking through his telescope.

"Looking for a way out?" she asked.

"Yes. There doesn't seem to be any thing about for miles gut what." He said to her. "At this rate the only thing we be going to is the locker." He said to her. She sighed and rested her head against his shoulder, tired.

It was then that Jack jumped up from where he had been sitting studying the charts and run to the side of the deck.

"What's that?" he asked the other crew members.

Going down the stairs to see what he was on about Helen run to his side, just to have him, leave it to go to the other side of the ship.

Once all of them had gone to that side of the ship, he returned to the one they had all originally been standing at.

"He's rocking the ship." Cried Gibbs.

Well that was obvious to them, all after he had said it. But if they were rocking though Helen, then they were all going to go over … in to the se3a!

"Jack stop there must be another way!" shouted Helen to him.

"Sorry love!" he responded to her as they run side by side.

"Aye! He's on to it!" said Hector as he joined the rest of the crew at the end other of the ship to Helen, running back and forth.

"But that's means we are going under water!" she said with fear

"Yeses darling!" he said to her. If nothing else this was going to have to cure her fear.

There was no way to stop running for Helen thought, if she did then she was even more likely to die.

It was not long before running across the deck felt as they were running up a hill. The moments when they grabbed the edges of the boat seemed to go on for ever. They cargo beneath them had been released.

Then it happened. At last they had rocked it so much it was going to flip.

"Now up is down." Said Jack next to her.

Helen struggled for freedom as soon as they were in the water. Where as the others who were all confident in the sea were so seemingly cool with it seemed ok, she begun trying to get air. But there was none.

Jack upon seeing her terror moved his hand from the railing do it was over hers to try and keep her there. If she let go now she'd be left behind, left to the locker.

Her eyes met his as she dared to open her eyes and he gave her a tiny smile.

Then in a moment where she didn't even get to think suddenly they plunged through the wasters and were up in the air again. That was when Helen realised they had made it back.

"Are you ok?" She saw Hector mouth to her as they both got up off the floor where they had ended up.

"Fine." She said back to him and he nodded.

This was where the real adventure begun.

"Sun rise." She heard miss Elizabeth not to far away and she looked to the where the sky was brightening by the moment.

Helen had rarely been up early enough to witness some thing so beautiful. It was so utterly stunning. Smiling over at Hector it wasn't long till she found her self back in his embrace. Faith had brought her this far, she thought to herself, and faith would take both of them back to the twins.


	8. Doubts

_**Chapter 8: Doubts**_

It wasn't long till Will Turner had the maps out, once they had all seemed to try and get Jack to the agreed to go to Brethren court meeting.

She and him were obviously the only ones against it but they both had quite different reasons for not wanting to go. He wanted to run away, she wanted her kids.

"We can restock there." Will told them as they came up an island.

"Why don't you lead the shore party and I stay with my ship." said Jack.

"I won't be leaving yer in charge of my ship." Hector defended himself.

For Helen, it wasn't only the sea which was new to here. It was this side of her lover. Up till now she had only ever seen him when he had been visiting her, she thought him very different when he was on the Pearl.

"Why don't you both go ashore and leave the ship in my command temporally." Said Will.

Neither captains seemed too thrilled by the idea but agreed to it none the less. Certainly it was more agreeable than one of them going and the other staying behind.

"Are you going to come ashore?" asked Hector.

"I don't really think I should. I might get so happy to be back on land that I refuse to return to the ship," Helen joked.

"Very well, then I shall see you in a while." He said as they lowered the long boat long boat.

"Helen, Elizabeth can you both go below deck and sort the cargo out. You know how to store it?" asked William to the women he loved. "Then you can show Helen?" he asked.

To both questions she had nodded.

"Seems all this captain stuff had gone to Will's heads." Said Elizabeth bitterly as they arrived in the level below the top one.

Helen, feeling it was not her place to pass judgement or agree stayed silent.

Elizabeth realised at that moment she knew little about the woman they had saved the night before. Asides from that, they were the only two women aboard the Pearl. They'd be on the same wave length. They should talk. Also it helped keep her mind off her father, and the Brethren Court, there was so much going on.

"So you come from Tortuga?" she asked.

"Yes. Though originally I crossed from England." She told her.

"How long ago?"

"A while now. It must be getting on for fourteen years," she worked out in her head. If she had and the twins ten years ago and had met Hector twelve years back, she had been there for about two years before. "Yes fourteen years."

"I don't mean to put it down but I have been to Tortuga, it can't be a very nice place to live, all the fighting." She commented.

"No, it isn't not always. But it is home to me now. It isn't all like the port is. There are some quiet areas of that island. I live in one of them, and just go to the port to work."

"Are you going to go back when all this is over?"  
"Can you ever go back from some thing like this? Truth be told I don't know Elizabeth. I don't know any thing right now except Hector's word."

"And you trust it?"

"I have to, if not who can turn too?" she asked and Elizabeth nodded guessing that was a fair comment. She had never been to sea before, and yet here she was what felt millions of miles from home.

She could only trust the one thing she knew.

To restore the cargo that had survived the journey was no easy to job. It was rather heavy and the other members of the crew who had been sleeping in the deck below helped the two girls before the task was done.

Going back on to top death though both Helen and Elizabeth were shocked see they had why you might call guests

"There from Singapore." Elizabeth realised having seen them before. "Captain Sao Feng what are you doing here?" she asked and was shocked to have one of there pirates man handle her.

Helen was the next to be taken. One on each arm they held her.

"Get off me!" she roared, not understanding any thing that was going on.

She struggled against them angrily. They had no right to do this to her.

"Its ok Helen." she heard Will say to her.

"There is nothing bloody ok about this, get off of me." she yelled at them.

"What be going on here then." Said Hector as he got back to the ship, him Jack and the shore party, having returned and the first thing he heard was his love screaming like a banshee. "Sag Feng is an odd coincidence you turning up here." He said to his fellow pirate lord.

"Get them to let go of me Hector!" Helen yelled at him, feeling clearly distressed by the whole thing.

"Neither Elizabeth nor Helen were part of any deal." said will to Sao Feng and he nodded.

"You heard Captain Turner," he said to his men.

"What?" asked Barbossa. Who the hell was Captain Turner he thought to himself as he saw Helen rush to his side.

"I need the pearl to free my father it is the only way," said Will to every one else. He had committed the mutiny.

-

"How long is it going to tare to get to Shipwreck cove?" asked Helen late that night.

Hector had observed a change in her that day. For the first time she had heard the roar of the Pearls guns, and she had seen men die. She had been unable to defend herself. And she had been afraid. But with Will on another ship those swordsmen classes were not going to materialize now.

"Tomorrow evening the pirates be gathering." He said to her.

The two of them had retreated to the Captains cabin. Hopefully the journey should be easier now he thought to himself.

She nodded blankly.

"I know yer were panicked by terday." He said as he went to where she was sitting and brushed the hair away from her face, so it run down her face. "And I hate ter say it but yer are just going to have ter get used to it, at least for the time being. This is our life right now." He told her.

"But at the end of it are we going to still have our lives." She said to him fearfully. For all her passion, she could only do what she knew. And yet she knew nothing of this pirate life. She had just been thrown in to this adventure so unaware. It was jointly the greatest and the worst thing she felt that had ever happened to her.

"We will. When I met Elizabeth she was as inexperienced as you be now, and she survived her captive." He said to her, failing to mention that capture had been him. "And the battle she was thrown in to. Listen to me Helen. If we go in to any sort of battle yer have a sword. Hopefully instinct will kick in."

"And if not?"

"I be there to protect you."

"You are going to be fighting for your own life," she shook her head.

"In that case my sweet you must find your own courage." He said to her.

"Hector will you make me a promise?" She asked. Slowly, he nodded.

"If I cant, go back to the kids – "

"None of that we be having tonight. We are going to be both going for them." he said to her gently.

"There may be no need to fight." She said and he nodded, but he doubted it.

There eyes met quite suddenly. He remembered what a plain little thing she was at times. But at that moment, if she were set next to the most beautiful women in the world, still he would have her.

Bringing her hand up, she lay in it on his chest gently, and it was not long till her fingers had wound themselves round the fabric of his shirt, and she was eagerly pulling him towards him, desiring his love once again.

"I need you tonight." She muttered to him gently.

"Then stop yer talking," he said. Suddenly, it was as if they were the people they had been ten years before once again.

Nothing had changed.

-

The next days sail was cooler. Probably because Turner was no longer aboard she thought to herself. His actions seemed – self-centred.

She knew he had done it for his father. But what about the rest of them? But didn't those sort of thought make her self centred as he was. She knew if it was Hector who was trapped she would want the twins to try and save him if they could.

But wasn't every ones actions self centred? Mutiny was a common thing here she reminded her self.

She didn't understand a lot of it. It made it harder for her.

That day she had been taught some of the basics, or some of them, of what needed to be done on a ship by some of the crew. If she was going to be on the crew then she had to pull her weight, they had been clear on that and she had been happy to help.

As she worked she was very aware of Hector's eyes in her. No doubt working out his next ploy to get her to stray on board when all this was over. And maybe she would. The only way to cure her fear was by facing it maybe...

"You know what you must do today." He heard a voice in his ear.

"Yes I know."

"Just makes sure you do because if not, what I gave back to you can be taken back again just as easy."

The words Tia was saying he knew to be true. And they chilled him to his bones. He remembered the years they had been apart. He was inclined to believe they had been the worse of his life. He did not intend to go back to being with out her again. In fact he knew he wasn't going to because he was never going to let her go. His obsession for her was as big as hers for him. It was rare he showed it as openly as she did though.

He turned angrily, his hand raised but she caught in and for a moment it turned too skeleton, reminding him of her power.

"Don't you forget why you had to being me back Calypso, it'll take nine pirates lords to free you, just as it took nine to bind you. Master Raghetti, Pintel," he called over to two of the crew. "Take this fish wife to the brig."

His wyes turned to see Helens on him. She looked shocked by the rashness which he had spoke to her.

He gave her a kind smile, or as kind as any smile from him could be but it was clear she had seen a side of him she had not before now.

Going over to her he sighed.

"Don't think any think of that Helen." He told her. He knew her. And he knew that if she had seen him in a confrontation with dome one she was going to worry. Especially when it was Calypso. She wasn't stupid. She had figured out some members of the crew had more power than others. She knew Calypso had some sort of magic about her.

"What did she do so bad that you had to send her to the brig." She asked.

"There are things in this world I don't think you understand or ever will. Don't worry about it."

"Then don't patronize me Hector." She said and continued with her work.

"I am not trying too."

"So don't fob me off." She said frustrated by him. She was well aware of the fact there was an age gap between the two of them. But it was far easier to handle when he was not acting as a father would towards his daughter.

"You're really beautiful when you're angry." He told her to make her forget the fight.

The most annoying thing for her was it worked.

It had been a truly beautiful day over the Caribbean and as Shipwreck Cove at long last came in to view, Helen thought it a very beautiful place. It was lit up with fire, and the ships that must have been destroyed there had been used to make a fortress.

It struck her that she had ore judged it as an ugly place when she had heard the name. How wrong she had been.

Maybe how she had been wrong about Hector. These last few days had been very thoughtful ones for her. She had never had an issue trusting what he had been saying to her before. Bur what Elizabeth had said anything about it to her, and then suddenly she had all these doubts creeping in.

How did she know she could trust him?

The previous night has been good. But had it been love? She had ever questioned it before.

He was the father of her children but was that all he was or should be to her?

The real Hector Barbossa was a pirate. Not the family man she longed for him to be. She was going to have to square with that one day.

Review!

An: sorry it has been a week but I have had exams to deal with. It might not be till next Friday I get the next chapter up.


	9. Fears Over Come

_**Chapter 9: Fears over come**_

"So that's it. We are all going to fight?" said Helen to Hector as they gout out of ship wreck cove. It was soon evident in the way that she was acting the decision they had come too was not the one she had been hoping for but he had known that was going to be the case.

"Yer we are." He said to her. That was what the pirate King had decided so they would follow her to battle. He had to do what his king had commanded him too and so did she.

He looked at Helen. He knew that had not been what she had wanted to hear.

Helen let out the biggest sigh he thought he had ever heard come out of her and turn way from him. She was simply so frustrated with her life at that moment.

As every one else went over to the Pearl too get ready he watched as she headed over to as small piece of the island and sit down. She wasn't happy and he knew it.

This was not the Helen he had fallen for all these years ago. She was still there. He just had to remind her of it.

"Where's yer spirit?" he said as he went over to her.

"What do you want from me?" she said asking the question him the question she had been thinking ever since she had been saved.

"I thought that we had both made it clear what we wanted from each other last night." He muttered in a bored fashion.

"That's so you. When we are together in bed that's fine by you isn't it? But the minute we need to talk-"

"What I don't listen? Yer can't say that I didn't listen to you that night when I saved you." He said to her.

"And of course have to be grateful to you for that now don't I?" she asked knowing that she was. He had always been her hero and still was, not that she'd ever tell him that.

"No I don't want you to be grateful."

"Then what do you want from me?"

"Your love Helen. That's the only thing I have ever asked for."

She turned to him and he knew what had said really hit home for her. She was trembling with – nerves?

"I know you do not want to fight. But I can't get you away from here. It is the only way my sweet." he told her.

Tears of absolute fear streamed on to her cheeks and she hated herself. All; she ever did was cry these days and she was sick of it.

But this time there was some one there to comfort her. Hector, had always been so embarrassed if he had ever seen her cry and felt uncomfortable but this time was different. He didn't know why.

Going over to her he embraced her even more fiercely than he had when they had been reunited, allowing her to bury herself within him. She had been so afraid. She was so afraid.

"I just want my babies." She said to him. She thought it as odd. All those years when she had been with the twins, she had never appreciated them because she had been missing him to much. Now it was the other way round.

Clinging to him for a moment of weakness she bawled her eyes out. She and the kids had such a bond. She hadn't known it till now.

As her head and her heart came back to her reality she tried to pull away but he would not allow her.

He wanted to be there for her and she knew it. But she was not used to being so open with him. She wasn't even used to him again yet, not properly. She'd never spoken to him about things that had matter to her before. She had always rather shut him off from her and then go back top him when she was a laugh again. But maybe they were meant to be older and wiser now and learn from there old mistakes. There had been so many and she knew a lot of them had been her fault. If she could go back and change it then she would. But she couldn't.

"I am so sorry." She said as she begun to wipe her eyes.

"Its ok." He told her. "I think you needed that." He told her.

"Maybe, but you didn't, and you're the one who did save me. I am grateful Hector. You know I am. It's just…"

"Hector and Jane are always on your mind?" He asked

"Yeah they are." She nodded with a sad smile.

"Well I know how that is ." ever since he had been told about them his mind bad been going back to the, quite a lot. Not as much she her. But in a way it was worse for him. at least she knew what they looked like, the sounds of there voices. He fooled himself he wasn't bothered… but it'd be nice to know he thought to himself. To know his own flesh and blood the way Helen did.

"I don't want ter make yer fight. But it is the only way to get back to them for you, and for me."

"I know it is." He said to him. "But I can't fight. I don't know how to handle a sword even when Seo Fang came on to the ship I was terrified." She admitted to him, hating herself for it. She must look so weak to him at that moment, she thought.

"Do you trust me?" he asked her serious for once.

She nodded. In her heart of hearts she knew she did.

"Then will you prove it to me?"

"Of course I will, if you think I have to." She nodded. She felt in that moment as if she might do anything for him.

"Then come with me." He said and offered her his hand to take which she did willingly.

They walked for a while, her having no idea what he had in mind and when the two of them had come to a very private part of the island they stopped.

"What's in your head?" she asked.

"It be a hot night 'un it?" he asked and she nodded.

"I wanna cool down." He said to her as he begun to take off his clothes till he was just down to his breeches.

She followed his lead when he looked at her challengingly till she was just in her petite coat.

"Come on then," he said as he took her hand and went to the waters edge, she backed off.

"I am not going in there." she said to him.

"But this be the only way yer going to over come yer fears love." He told her. "Come on. Face it." he told her.

"I don't think I can." She said as she looked fearfully at the water.

He walked around her till he was standing behind her and he put his strong arms round her with the deepest passion she had ever felt.

"We have never been all about love darlin'. Lust yes. Flirting yes. But we always used love lightly when we told each other that we did love one 'nother. Now I needs you ter prove yer word is true." He told her.

It is…. She thought to herself. "I am so scared." She whispered to him with a look of disbelief on her face. Why was he doing this to her she thought?

"I know yer are. But I am here. I am not going ter let any thing bad happen ter yer. Trust me Helen. I am not going to be letting yer go." He said as he kissed her neck, their bare skin touching. "Get in the water."

After so many years of running from her fear she didn't know if this was the right way to confront it. But if she had to do it, there wasn't time for it to be any other way. And so looking back at Hector she nodded, kissed his cheek and dipped her toe in the water.

At first she recoiled turning back in to her lovers arms, her fear so acute that it was as if it was burning through every piece of her shattered with tiredness body. She could feel Hector was with her though, he had kept his word, his hands ever so gently on her hips. He was not going to let her go it alone. They were going to do it together.

Putting her entire foot in for a moment she let it rest before following with the other, and she could hear Hector talking to her from behind, muttering words of encouragement and comfort to her but she was so fearful that she could not make them out.

"Please don't make do this my love." She said but he didn't move, staying firmly behind her before applying a little pressure to her making her go further in to the pool.

She knew he was not going to relent now. It was sink or swim time. Not only for her, but for them. If she could not do this, then she didn't know if there was going to be a them and she so wanted them to be.

She had tried living with out him. It was not nice. In fact it just didn't work. Every day they had been apart her heart had been broken. She didn't want to go back to that.

Shutting her eyes she let him guide her and she recalled the words he had said to her just minutes before.

He would not let her go. He had no intention of letting her die. He had saved her, he wanted her and before she knew it she was waist deep in water and he was still holding her.

Leaning back in to him she shut her eyes and let him take her further out. There they were, together in the water holding each other close, shut away from the world, her fear literally being washed away.

Trembling, she turned in his arms to face him. she had done it. She was in the sea again. And the longer she was there with him the smaller her fears seemed.

Leaning in to hid she grazed her lips against his. Finally she shut the gap between them and lay her head on his shoulder as he held her.

He felt so proud of what she had done. Normally he would have thought she'd be fighting and punching and kicking him but she was doing it, she was doing as she had been told for once because she knew it was the right thing.

It was the only way they could be together.

"I'm so sorry." She whispered to him.

"What for?" he asked gently.

"Every thing. For Jack, for hurting you. Its the last thing wanted to do. I love you." She said and he nodded.

"I know you do. I know now. Stop talking." He said and she nodded and went back to hugging him.

He was right, what they were doing said every thing that had to be. They were together in a world of quiet in that moment.

Leaning in to him as he held her she felt so safe. Safer than she had in years. Yet she was in the water. it was so odd. She didn't think she'd ever feel safe there. But she did.

Kissing her neck Hector smiled. He had done it. He had proved to her that the water was nothing to fear and he knew it.

She turned in to his kisses till there lips connected. And that night was like no other. Like no other would be again…

Helen awoke on the pearl. She didn't remember how she got there. As she looked back on the previous nights events she sighed in happiness. Every thing she had ever needed she had found in her darlings arms. There was going to be a tomorrow for them. She knew it in her heart.

She could feel her hair was still wet. From sea water. It didn't scare any more.

The stand that they were going to be making today did. But if she had over come the water, maybe she could over come every thing else.

It was then as she sat up in bed Hector came back in.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Do I look ready?"

"no." he shook his head smiling as he recognized the tone and the sarcasm of the Helen of the past.

"But I do feel as if the world is there for the taking. Grab it with me." she asked.

"Always my sweet." He said as he went to the bed and kissed her forehead, running his hand down her hair.

"Thank you for last night. It was so perfect."

"I am glad you thought so."

"Didn't you?" she asked quizzically.

"Of course I did. Made I think us both be seeing each other differently." He told her.

"Yeah well it made me see we have a real chance at a future together." She said to him.

"Do we." he asked.

"If yer want one."

"How so?"

"Because if we get through today and we survive then ok, if it is still want you want then I am going to come to sea with you." she said. She had no reason not to. She knew the children would love to be with there papa and she wanted to be with him too. When they were apart it was as if she was in hell.

They were the words he had been longing to hear. For so many years. They were going to be together at last.

"Thank you." He muttered to her. That had been the only news he had wanted for so long. Picking up her hand he kissed it. If only he could take her right there and then he would. But there was no time.

"Any time my love." She said to him. "Well if we are going to make this final stand then I am going to have to get ready for It." she said and he nodded.

Indeed she would.

Getting up she saw where he had laid out clothes for her.

They were unfamiliar but she was determined not to let that faze her. And so for the first time ever she put on breeches. It was so odd not to be in a dress.

Barbossa had to say he didn't like her looking so – manly?

"As Jack says – it should be a dress or nothing."

"I agree. When we get out of this you shall have to buy me plenty of dresses."

"And I am sure I shall." Said Hector.

"I shall make it compulsory. " she said to him smirking.

"I am glad." he nodded.

"Sarcasm my love?"

"Never my sweet."

And so it was time for the pirates to make there last stand.

There had always been pirates sailing the Caribbean oceans and if they had any thing to do with it, there always would be.


	10. Pirate

Chapter 10: Pirate

"Good bye Mrs Turner."

It was all over already and Helen didn't believe it really. After all that build up. To think the battle for the seas was over. And she had come off… ok-ish.

She had a flesh wound on her right hip and it was painful she had to say, but Hector had been near her and had killed the pirate who had been trying to kill herself swiftly and now it was done. They had won. The pirates of the Caribbean were once again safe.

Elizabeth and Will were going off for there one day together, now he was captain of the Flying Dutchman. Well she knew what it was like to be parted from the man you loved for ten years. Not nice. And she wasn't going to have to go through it again.

But at least Miss Elizabeth was going to get to say good bye in a good way. In the best way. Her and Will were always going to be true to each other.

"I hope to see you soon Helen." She said as she passed her and Helen nodded to her King. After the battle she had engaged in she was calling herself a pirate and she was doing so with pride.

She watched as Elizabeth left the ship and had one last playful banter with Jack before she did so. Helen then turned to Hector and breathed a sigh of relief. It was really done and she could let herself look in to the future now truly, and she knew it was all going to be about them from now on.

He opened his arms and embraced her. It was over now, really over the past ten years. Kissing her fore head he smiled.

"What do you say we go and get our kids now?" he asked.

"Yes." She nodded in to him. That was the only thing she wanted to do. Be with them and him. It felt as if her life was falling in to place now. Just to embrace them and not let go again. That was all she wanted.

"Yeah." He muttered in agreement as he took in a deep breathe holding her close to him.

"We're going to be good this time." She said to him. "Or I am." She said to him.

"Well I don't think I am ever going to be that." He said to her honestly. Goodness was not to be found in a pirate.

Love, on the other hand…

"No. I wouldn't want you to be. If you were good, you would not be my Hector. And that you will be for eternity."

"And you my Helen, but this talk. It isn't you…your not this – touchy." He said to her, his wickedness shining through his eyes.

"No I am not. But I just wanted to tell you. I love –"

"As I do you. Now, you should go and lay down."

"Is that all you think about?"

"Nay, I didn't mean fer me to come as well."

"Then what's the point?" she pouted.

"For you to rest."

"Ok." She said to him kissing him.

Turning to the stairs that would lead her down to there cabin she sighed happily. This was every thing she had ever wanted.

Turning back though just as she was about to disappear down stairs she turned to Hector.

"Do you remember that day on the b each, when we drunk the rum. You were late because you were getting it." she asked.

"Yes." He nodded. He remembered.

"I asked you how you'd describe me. Has it changed." She asked. "Over the years, have I changed?"

"Yes you have my sweet."

"Then how would you describe me today?" shr asked.

He smirked and the word that had been dying to roll off his tongue in to her direction at last did.

"Pirate."

THE END

Sorry the ending is so short it just felt so fitting when I thought of it. Kind of like a full circle.

I hoped you enjoyed reading this!


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